


Prehensile

by frangipani



Category: Star Wars Legends - All Media Types
Genre: Consentacles, F/M, Force Woo, JAT timeline, Miscommunication, Not really about tentacles, Notice me senpai, Waterworld - Freeform, Worldbuilding, mara is a professional, master's course in passive aggression, metaphorically, or I'll punch you in the face, sorry kinksters this is not the fic for you
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-28
Updated: 2018-05-28
Packaged: 2019-05-07 15:50:16
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 24,853
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14674347
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/frangipani/pseuds/frangipani
Summary: Post JAT resentments simmer and boil when Mara is hired to accompany Luke to a meeting with the mysterious cephalopodal Uluani.Alternate title:Acting the Fool and Playing with Tentacles.No one get excited, it's much tamer than you think.





	1. Chapter 1

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> My playlist can be found [here](http://teagrl.tumblr.com/post/174355537077/music-to-play-with-tentacles-to).

Starlines dissolve into the usual pinpricks of stars as the _Hunter's Luck_ drops out of hyperspace. The blue sphere of a planet swells up, and as it does, Mara switches to manual control, charting their course. When she looks up from the display, wispy clouds lie like thin thread over the blue as they approach.

From this vantage point, it all feels disturbingly still. Lifeless.

Mara shakes the feeling; the _Luck's_ sensor readings show the planet bubbling with life, all of it just under the surface. It's a fact. The holos had been included among the documents Luke had given her to look over in preparation for the trip.

He’s probably going over them right now in his cabin. Mara’s a little surprised he hasn’t come into the cockpit to get a sense for the planet. She'd announced over the intercom that they'd be dropping off just before they did. But then, he’d spent most of the trip either neck deep in research or meditating. She figures it’s because the beings he's going to contact on behalf of the Jedi Order are said to be particular. Maybe he wants to be extra settled for them.

She senses when Luke starts heading her way and stiffens, immediately annoyed at herself for doing so. It's been like that the whole trip. 

He pops in a few seconds later. 

“Acquis,” she says. "Readings are as indicated in the documents.”

He murmurs an assent, taking the copilot’s seat and strapping in. “I’m hoping they’ll come and get us. We won’t be able to find our way down.”

It’s at the tip of her tongue to mention that he could have asked for extra aquatic vehicles if he didn’t want to take that chance, but she opts against it.

“Commencing descent and alighting sequence,” is all she says, angling them for entry. The atmosphere clears even more, thin clouds peeling to reveal an almost terrifying expanse of ocean, not a single structure upon it. The sensors give her a clear reading of the path the nav comp gave her, the ocean's condition largely cooperative.

Mara casts a glance at Luke. His expression remains as closed off as it'd been since this trip began. 

Since you left the academy, a voice keeps nagging, and she shuts it up as swiftly as she engages the repulsorlifts, firing up the retrothrusters.

The water landing goes as smoothly as she'd expected. Even if the weather conditions had been challenging, she’d overseen the _Luck_ outfitted with all the necessary equipment. The sway and rock of the ship with the gentle waves while she goes through her postflight checklist does make for a strange feeling.

“Should be a matter of waiting,” she mutters, scanning over her screens. 

Luke nods and unstraps himself. “Let me know when they make contact.” He disappears down the corridor.

There's a reason for that, she tells herself. Her services had been arranged by Organa Solo. Mara had informed Luke as much over the awkwardness of seeing him again after last time. She'd gone for professional and collected as she'd made clear the reason why she'd come -- the job and _only_ the job. And she'd been about to go into the _Luck's_ extensive modifications for travel to a world like Acquis when one of his vapehead students had nagged for him to come attend to something. 

Of course he'd gone.

Luke had given her a hail through her comm scarcely half an hour later, and she'd tried not read his use of the comm over a simple call through the Force as a statement. It'd been overkill. He had to have known that.

They'd briskly negotiated the details at whatever dusty conference room he'd turned into a makeshift office, Luke’s fingers steepled as he very calmly explained the nature of the trip and the _significance_ of the holocron, Mara interrupting him far more times than truly necessary. 

He'd simply stop, answer the questions, and then go back to whatever he'd been droning on about. What he hadn't been saying though, Mara had heard clearly under that flat, detached tone: _I don’t want you here_. 

She likes to think all those interruptions were her response: _Tough._

It's fine. Mara looks over the life readings. She knows why Organa Solo had approached her and Karrde. Organa Solo could get a pilot anywhere. As embarrassed as Luke is over his sister hiring him a babysitter, and sore it'd been _her_ , of all people, he would have never accepted _just_ a pilot.

No, and Organa Solo's concern is warranted. Given the calamities Luke has barely scraped his way out of, Mara can't blame her for thinking that whatever fool errands her brother did ostensibly on behalf of his order, it'd be for the best if he did them with someone capable of watching his back. Organa Solo had mentioned sending Solo himself, but he didn’t have the resources, she’d said, Mara did.

Mara doesn’t know if Organa Solo had meant access to Karrde's stock, or if it'd been a way of not broaching that with three kids, Solo had gotten as indispensable as her brother was foolhardy. Whatever way she’d meant, at this moment Mara’s between projects. She’d closed out that issue with Par’tah at the Jospro sector, and Karrde’s working on some other thing he hasn’t clued her in on -- apparently there’s a lot of moving pieces. Soon, he’s told her, which should at the least pique her interest, but she’s oddly indifferent these days.

It'd ended up being this or Coruscant right now, and even with Luke acting like she’s the walking plague, she’d rather be flying through the stars than arguing with government officials, or worse, sweet-talking them. Luke might be as obnoxious as ever but he’s kept to himself thus far. She's had worse jobs.

The comm crackles. “This is Uli-varit control. Baidu-class star yacht identify yourself and state your purpose.”

Mara hits the switch. Uli-varit is the nearest city beneath them and their destination. 

“Greetings Uli-varit control, this is the _Hunter’s Luck_. I am Captain Mara Jade. My passenger has an audience with the Uluani. We have proper documentation. Initiating transponder code sequence and document relay.”

She sits back to wait for a response. 

“Transponder code accepted," control says before long. "Welcome, Captain Jade of the _Hunter’s Luck_. Confirm purpose is Master Skywalker's audience with the Uluani.”

“That is correct.”

“Confirmed. Confirm two humans.” Control transmits a reading of their coordinates.

Mara looks over it. “All of that’s correct.” 

“Standby for water vessel. Twenty minutes,” the voice informs them, sending Mara a readout of the docking procedure.

And that’s that. Mara toggles for the intercom. “They’re coming to get us in twenty minutes.”

“Okay,” Luke acknowledges, and after a moment adds, “You can stay here if you like.”

Mara scowls down at the switch. 

“The Uluani are not aggressive and there’s no reason to think going down there will be the least bit dangerous,” he explains. “It should take me four days at most.”

Mara feels her jaw clench as she leans forward, lifting up from the pilot's couch. “The terms of the contract your sister made were for full backup.”

Luke comes back with: “I don’t think that will be necessary if --”

"Yeah, why don't you let me do my _job_ and take that up with your sister _after_ she pays me." Mara sits back down. Whatever, it's a fair request.

The line goes silent for too long.

She counts to five silently, and hits the switch again. "I told them there’d be two of us to pick up. They’re already on their way.”

For a second, she thinks he’s going to argue, but all he says when his voice comes through is a collected “All right.”

Mara grinds her teeth at it, but focuses on going to her cabin for her bag.

Luke is at the lounge waiting when she arrives. He's changed from his worn flightsuit to his full Jedi robes for the occasion, brown cloak and everything, placidly waiting. All that's missing is his pulling the hood up for added _mystique_. Pity none of the beings who think like that have had the pleasure of seeing Luke smoothly hit the wrong antigrav control -- with the Force and from across the room, no less -- and end up in a decidedly unJedi-like faceplant on the Imperial Gym mats. Mara's mood lifts at the memory. It's a good one.

His head darts up a few minutes later, seconds before she senses presences near the ship. He doesn’t have to say anything; Mara goes back to the cockpit where she witnesses the top of a huge rectangular structure, perhaps twice as large as the ship, emerge from the sea's depths all alongside the _Luck_. She sets up the controls for the boarding hook up and ship tether since the atmosphere is all carbon dioxide. The hook up is an easy thing to finagle with the _Luck’s_ equipment -- she'd been passed information about docking procedures beforehand. The hook seals and cycles without a problem, and she intercoms Luke to meet her at the airlock.

When she returns, she signals to the ship alongside them. The airlock opens first on their end, then on the other. Opposite them, a tall, thin and long-necked biped with large oval eyes waits. Not quite Kaminoan, the Acquian variant has been thought to have evolved from a related aquatic ancestor. Like the Mon Calamari, these beings are as comfortable in the water as out. Most of them on this part of the planet work as caretakers of the Uluani, according to the files. Exposure to the Uluani has given them the ability to engage with them more deeply than any other beings on the planet.

“Greetings.” The bald head marks her as female, Mara remembers. The being speaks in Basic though the accent is unfamiliar to Mara. “You seek an audience with the Uluani?”

Luke replies, “I am Luke Skywalker, Jedi Knight. I made contact with Caretaker Ban Yu of the Second Garden several weeks ago."

She nods. “I am Del po of the Fifth Garden, I can take you to the Second Garden's visitor center." Her gaze falls on Mara. “Captain Jade, I presume?”

“Correct.”

Del po turns. “Follow me.”

\--

Del po leads them into a submarine, but this is only a small part of the ship, apparently the rest of it will remain tethered to the _Luck_ for the duration of their stay until another sub can take them back up to it.

As they inch into the passenger seats behind the pilot's, it's clear that the seats are made for two beings of thin and long proportions like their pilot. While the sub's ceiling is high, the seats present a narrow, highly unpleasant squeeze. Even with Luke shifting to give her space, Mara's knee ends up digging just over his, her shoulder wedged so tightly she keeps tamping on the instinct to yank her arm away and shake him off like a bad spill.

Mara distracts herself by looking through the tiny viewer beside her. The water grows slightly darker as they descend, but lights shimmer in the distance, becoming brighter as the underwater city of Uli-varit comes into view. Massive corals the size of buildings comprise it. Some reach up high like domed towers, some like spiny, winding trees, while others spread wide like thick plates, one on top of the other. Other submarines zip past them, weaving between the corals.

Their submarine approaches a smaller coral structure, white, rounded and vaguely brain-like in shape, and they descend towards what would be the structure's stem. Mara expects a hangar door opening, but there's no indication of one as they glide just under the structure's head, the viewer giving Mara a glimpse of a docking station around them. The sub comes to a stop.

"How is this sealed?" Mara can't help asking, looking over at the unfamiliar instrument panel.

"The anthozoa have a thin translucent membrane that encloses a portion of the exoskeleton," Del po explains as her slender fingers move over the controls. "Over time we've found ways of integrating a life support system for humanoids." 

Anthozoa refers to the coral they're in, Mara recalls. Something beeps and Del po passes her hand through a panel that lights up intermittently. Mara hears a hydraulics hiss she recognizes. A pressurization sequence. 

A few moments later they're walking down a gangway where another being like Del po is waiting.

“Master Skywalker? Captain Jade?” The new being greets them, as they walk out and Mara notices the higher title and the headcrests, along with the pristine white robes. This one is male, then. "I am Ban Yu, Head Caretaker of the Second Garden. "

Luke steps forward, taking it as his cue. “Greetings. On behalf of the Jedi Order, I thank you for hosting us." He whisks out a pouch and presents it to Ban Yu. Mara doesn’t know exactly what is in the pouch, a non-negligible amount of credits, most likely.

Ban Yu accepts the pouch. “We appreciate your donation.” He extends a thin arm forward into a nearby turbolift, walking on ahead. "In our correspondence you mentioned wanting to inquire about an artifact in the Uliani's keeping."

“An ancient Jedi artifact, yes. A holocron." Luke falls into step beside him, Mara behind both of them. "I hope to ask them for it.”

“An ancient Jedi artifact,” Ban Yu echoes. “How old?” He waits while they walk into the turbolift, and presses for a floor marked in a script Mara doesn't understand. The turbolift door closes and it begins to ascend.

“Before the Old Republic.”

The existence of the Uluani is not common knowledge. Mara's own searches through various databases after receiving Tionne's files unearthed nothing. Apparently, either Tionne or Luke had come across records of the holocron being handed off in some _Chu'unthor_ documents with the contact information for the Garden -- the Uluani's habitat. Communication proceeded from there with the Garden making available their own files, a confidentiality agreement in near ancient legalese had been included. More than that though, Mara assumes it's the self selecting nature of those who come to Acquis that has kept the Uluani in relative secrecy. The planet is on the far end of Wild Space after all, and the information on it doesn't make it sound as if it's worth the trip.

Ban Yu’s eyes blink slowly. “The Uluani have a great many things in their keeping. They are generous and not likely to refuse a request made in good faith. If at one time this object was entrusted to them, it is likely in their care still. It would only be a matter of asking them for it. I will take you to a sitting room for refreshment while your lodgings are prepared.”

The turbolift opens and they cross out into a wide area with transparisteel walls that remind Mara of an aquarium's viewroom.

“This is the visitor center for humanoids,” Ban Yu explains. Through the glass Mara can see the various multicolored corals that house the city, broken up by gigantic yellow or white anemones, their tendrils waving about.

“I thought we were _inside_ a coral,” Mara says to their host. Why can she see through it as if it were transparisteel?

“We are, though this isn’t strictly coral as you probably know it. Our anthozoa is a larger and more complex organism. What it secretes is not calcium carbonate. Our scientists have called it ilithin balsite, a translucent material.”

Mara knows that much from the literature though the actual compound doesn't mean much to her. “But it's still organic like coral?”

“Yes. Alive, and it accommodates us like any other creature in the ecosystem.” The first inhabitants were the ones to modify the coral that way, building habitats on their enormous exoskeletons.

Are all the anthozoa like this?" Luke asks gesturing around them.

"No, only the larger ones. The smaller ones host other organisms."

Soon a door slides open to reveal a lounging area with chairs and several couches, an autokettle at the middle of the table, two mugs beside it.

Ban Yu indicates they should go in, but stays at the doorway. “Food will be brought here in several hours. Do you have any preferences or restrictions?”

She shakes her head as Luke says, “No, whatever you have will be fine.”

“I will return for you once your room is ready.” With that, Ban Yu leaves. 

Mara occupies herself getting some tea as Luke sits down and goes for his datapad. Hands on the mug, she walks to the glass, looking out at the view outside. A school of blue-green fish make their way past what seems like some purplish sea urchins, other smaller multicolored fish flitting around. A blue starfish the size of her back perches at the side of a coral as big as a boulder.

Mara sips her tea, which is not that far from elba in taste save the faint fishy note. The scene is vastly more animated than she had first realized while also being tranquil like sea scenes tend to be -- slow moving, rather. The only strange thing being the large size of everything around her, even the smallest fish are as long as her arm. She catches sight of a gently curved shape floating in the distance, its iridescent color making it look as if it's twinkling-- a sea horse? Mara squints and leans forward --

A bang startles her, something fleshy and slightly pink slapping on the glass. She lets out a startled cry, the tea spilling onto her shoulder. The cry changes to a hiss and several instinctive curses at the burn just as she realizes it’s a tentacle.

But she’s also startled at the sound that breaks from Luke. Was that a snort? She turns her head in his direction, eyes compressing to a glare.

There's no indication of anything. In fact, he’s suddenly cheerier than she’s seen him yet when he says, “It’s an Uluana. You okay?”

Luke walks over to the glass as she mumbles a reply and searches for some napkins, trying not to think about tossing the rest of the tea in his face. The vehemence and violence of the reaction catches her by surprise, but her feelings hadn't seeped out, or if they have Luke doesn’t react, regardless. He’s placed his palm on the glass over where the tentacle’s tiny suckers are affixed.

“It didn’t mean to scare you,” Luke says in that mildly chiding tone, which in no way helps her current level of animosity. “It just wanted to say hello.”

She ignores him and turns her attention back to the tentacle, to the oddness to that it’s just a tentacle, but that was in the documentation too, that Uluani were a kind of hive mind. Its appendages could go off on their own, but tangle together to make themselves into a larger organism. It’s among the strangest creatures she’s read about.

But, wait, was Luke actually _hearing_ it? “It’s communicating with you?”

He grunts out something in the affirmative.

“And you can -- you can talk to it back?”

Luke twists to look at her. “Yeah, they have a measure of Force sensitivity. I felt it approach. Strange that you didn’t.”

She swallows down the last with a click of her teeth while Luke goes back to talking with the karking tentacle. 

It feels like a swipe at her, which is uncharacteristic. It's probably not at all. And that means there’s no acceptable, dignified response, so she leaves the cup at the table, and continues dabbing uselessly at her tunic until Ban Yu comes back.

Luckily, their host doesn’t notice or comment on the stained shirt as he leads them to the room. It’s a dormitory style set up that makes sense given what Ban Yu has stated of their visitors and the research station as a whole. A couple of bunk beds are at either side of the room a desk and a chair, the ‘fresher down the hallway. 

Ban Yu gives them an hour for supper and leaves them. Mara goes to her bags and claims the bunk nearest the exit, wondering if she made the right call with coming. She believes in following contracts, but she knows this is safe, and it’s obvious she’s completely superfluous. Worse, she thinks pulling out another tunic from her bag, this whole thing could potentially be so outside what she knows so as to be embarrassing. She hasn’t even spent twenty four hours here and it’s already heading there.

She grabs her clothes and goes to the ‘fresher to change. 

\--

Dinner goes by in much the same manner. Ban Yu is there which means Luke spends it asking about the Uluani. Current research states they have an increased sensitivity to electrical impulses so mild that few beings can sense them. It’s their main form of communication, apparently, and there have been some links posited between the brain waves of these Acquians and those of Uluani, given how long they've been interacting.

The conversation continues along those lines with Luke comparing notes with Ban Yu, who clearly expects it. Mara asks a couple of questions about safety and Ban Yu confirms what she’d read about the Uluani’s agreeable nature. Luke shifts the conversation back to the issue of the Uluani as keepers of all sorts of artifacts, and Mara’s attention shifts grudgingly back to the grilled eel on her plate. It's delicious, but she can't do more than appreciate it in a distant way.

It’s not that Mara needs entertaining, and she understands why Ban Yu doesn't address her, she's just the pilot, but it doesn’t stop it from irritating that Luke just goes with it, that he's only been tolerating her on this trip. She remembers when it used to be different. They hadn't known each other then, not really, she reminds herself and pushes the misplaced nostalgia aside.

She could have stayed on the _Luck_ , waiting for Karrde to get back to her about that other thing.

That doesn't seem any better.

As Mara’s finishing the last of her eel, Ban Yu and Luke settle on a time where Luke will get to meet with the Uluani. 

Ban Yu tells Luke, “They always request for the emissary to ascertain the suitability of its interlocutor. But if the interlocutor is deemed acceptable, you are free to ask and the Uluani will return what you seek.”

“Who will be the emissary?” Luke asks.

“I believe you met it already.”

Recognition flits over Luke's face. “Oh, the Uluana at the transparisteel.”

Ban Yu nods. 

Dinner ends not a moment too soon and Mara goes to the 'freshers to finish her night rituals. As she does she’s tempted to stay in and meditate there for privacy, but she’ll be damned if she’s changing her routine because of Luke. She doesn’t meditate as a Jedi thing, she meditates because it makes her less likely to run off at the mouth, or depending on the situation, leave a hole in some moron being’s head for blasting at her. The fact that she honed it at the academy is purely incidental.

Mara squares her shoulders as she leaves, but Luke is just sitting at the desk reading his datapad. When she walks in, he stands, and goes to the 'freshers without so much as an acknowledging look.

That's what she expected so she settles into a cross-legged pose on her bunk. It takes her a while to ease into her breathing cycle, but when the switchover happens, it clicks and everything goes away. It’s not the first time she’s meditated while aggravated, and she's marginally less annoyed when she comes out of it. A victory.

Except Luke is on the floor at the foot of his bunk in _his_ routine and even _that_ feels like an implicit criticism. Before she can stop herself, her hardwon calm peeters out like a spark on a flame retardant suit.

She brought it on herself. Mara arranges herself on the bunk in jerky movements, yanking the sheets around her. She could have told Organa Solo no; she could have given her any other contact, but no, _she_ had to take this blasted job, and now she's consigned to watch while Luke held hands and made friends with fraking tentacles, while reading _you’re doing everything wrong, just go away_ into everything. And what’s truly the worst part is that she knows a good portion of it is in her head. Luke doesn’t care enough to hold outright hostility, the most he feels is simple annoyance at the way she wastes his time. 

Mara yanks her pillow into the right spot. Regardless, she wasn’t wrong and she _did_ leave last time -- and the academy just about crumbled to the dirt. Blind luck was all that saved them.

She’d been _right_.

At the end of the day, Mara hates that it doesn’t seem to matter.

\-- 

Her alarm gets her up and Luke’s bunk is empty and made. She feels no particular way about it, she notes with relief. Thanks to the rejuvenative powers of sleep, she can take on the day with more calm.

Mara goes through some simple stretches waiting for Luke to leave the 'fresher, breezes right past him and his stuffy formal robes with a blurted out “Good morning” and not a single glance back.

Luke is sitting at the desk with his datapad and looks up when she returns.

“Ban Yu just said they put breakfast out at the lounge,” he tells her.

She nods.

“You know,” he starts hesitantly as he stands, sliding the chair carefully back into place. “You don’t have to come for the whole thing.”

“What thing?”

“My audience with the Uluani," he says as he starts walking towards the lounge. "They’re just going to put me in a tank so that the Uluana can scan me, and I can let it know that I need the holocron. It’ll probably want to do some deeper scan with others after that. It’s all going to be drawn out and probably boring.”

Mara stares at him blankly. The lounge is not that far and they're going in as she says, “So I should just go to the room and spend three days there.”

Her tone isn’t even sharp and she’s certain she’s not projecting anything, but Luke’s face tightens.

His tone is clipped in a way she's familiar with by now; she may as well have mocked one of his bone-dry Jedi treatises or his shavit excuse for a curriculum again. He moves towards the table, his back to her. “You might have work. I don’t know.”

“Don’t worry,” she replies in the same tone. “I can always go get my datapad.”

They eat breakfast in silence. Not just any silence, the kind of silence that sneaks into every crevice and cloys up the atmosphere. Petrol silence.

Mara stands from the table with her piece of toasted seaweed in hand looking out towards the corals around them. In the back of her mind she wonders if another tentacle is going to show up. 

There’s a knot at the base of her neck at the thought that Luke might make some comment that she’ll reply to with acid, then, predictably, he’ll take the high road, and she’ll end up feeling sore and foolish. It’s never a good idea to get embroiled into a back and forth with him, she knows, but sometimes she forgets.

She already feels sore and foolish. It’s not even stanging lunch. 

No tentacle shows up this time. 

Ban Yu appears at the door. “It is time for the test. Are you ready?”

Luke nods and follows him without a look back.

\--

Ban Yu takes them towards a turbolift and they descend to an area that is a couple of levels under the dock. Since the structure is coral she can see through the floors above her depending on the angle. At one point, Mara thinks she can see the shape of the submarine that brought them here, stationed maybe twenty feet above them, but it's hard to tell distance with water. 

There’s a crevice in the middle of the dim room before them, a roughly cylindrical opening, maybe five or six feet across. That must be the tank. There are some stairs that lead about a half level down, to what Mara assumes is an observation area.

She’s looking at it curiously when she gets a flash of unease -- it cuts off quickly, but she knows it’s from Luke. It doesn’t feel like it’s about danger, but she’s immediately on guard.

“Too much light bothers the Uluani,” Ban Yu is saying, “which is why the illumination is kept low.”

“Where do they enter from?” Luke asks. “Do you take them out of the water?”

“There is a small opening from the ocean into the tank,” Ban Yu replies. “They cannot be subjected to this atmosphere -- it is toxic to them. All interaction must be conducted in their environment. The tank also gives us a way to regulate the water temperature.” He looked at Luke. “The Uluani have dealt with aerobic vertebrates before." It clicks in a split second later that he means _oxygen-breathing sentient_. But Ban Yu is continuing, "They understand the importance of breathing devices. We have many available that you may choose from.”

Luke pulls out something from his belt that Mara hasn’t seen before.

“An aqua breather,” Ban Yu's voice rises a bit as if he's pleased. “Do you have a wetsuit with you as well?”

Luke’s voice sounds slightly strained. “No, I thought, ah, use of clothing wasn’t the norm.”

Mara restrains her surprise. That wasn’t in the documents.

So Luke is going to be holding hands with some tentacle while naked in a tank?

She’s pretty sure that’s the kind of thing that's worth a pretty credit in some worlds.

It also occurs to her that this could be the reason why he shoo’ed her off earlier, or where the unease came from, which is precious. Skinny dipping with a tentacle probably violates some sort of farm modesty code. Being watched as you do it probably violates another.

She’s extremely proud of herself for not smirking.

Ban Yu drags her mind out of the drainage channel when he says, “No, for the test all beings are required to have a synthetic skin boundary. It helps the Uluani regulate their communication.”

Ah, Mara thinks, the electrical thing. She stays there while Ban Yu leads Luke off to the 'freshers. Her day’s not looking that bad anymore. 

Luke reappears in a wetsuit trailing Ban Yu a few moments later, serenity sadly restored. The wetsuit does leave very little to the imagination between the hard line of his shoulders and the leanness of his legs, but the thought that all of _that_ is just a pretty wrapper around an insufferable hectoring fool keeps her eye from wandering. Much.

She’s under no illusion that she’s an easy personality to deal with, but at least all her prickliness is readily apparent, not shuffled underneath a collection of friendly smiles and self effacement. Her hardheadedness blares with the honesty of a neon holo ad -- it’s not hidden away like a counterfeit credit chip in a shiny purse.

“The Uluani emissary will come see you once we prepare the space for them. It will attach at the wrist and establish communication from there.”

Luke nods.

“Do you want to go in as we acclimate the tank or after?”

“After.” Mara expects most humans would choose this. Diving in is different from the claustrophobia of being in a tank as it fills up, and she recalls a couple of Luke's stories ending with dunks in a bacta tank, so she’s reasonably sure he'd want to forgo those associations. Maybe that had something to do with the unease, too.

Ban Yu gestures to the space that’s quickly filling up with water. “When you’re ready, you may go on. We will be in the observation deck.” He gestures to Mara.

“Is it always in a tank?” Mara asks as they take the stairs.

“Yes, the second tank however, is larger to accommodate many, it's also closer to the garden. This one is solely for the emissary to test for suitability for the Uluani's protection.”

Mara squints at him. “Their protection?”

By then they’ve arrived to an area where the glass wall looks into the tank. Luke has yet to go in and for an instant Mara contemplates the distant possibility of Luke doing this without knowing how to swim, and relying entirely on the Force. It’s only because the Rebellion would have never been so stupid so as not to teach its people to swim that makes her ditch the thought. Otherwise she’s entirely convinced that would be _exactly_ the kind of dim-witted nerfheaded scheme Luke would concoct.

“The Uluani are fragile. They prefer to halt communication altogether rather than risk stress.”

“Different,” Mara mutters as Luke dives into the tank, water bubbling all around him.

Ban Yu looks at her. “Most of their body is the equivalent of your limbic system, surrounded by nervous tissue.”

Luke kicks up lightly. It's the stupid lighting. Criminally flattering. She hauls her eyes away. “So they’re what? Swimming, feeling brains?” The documents mentioned this, and Ban Yu and Luke had gone over it during dinner too. 

“Of a sort, but unlike humanoids or larger species, there is no lag in the response time of a perception. It is immediate and impactful. A stress response could potentially cause a shutdown of their life system.”

Mara feels her eyes widen. She doesn't recall that in particular. “And this perception is of -- of their interlocutor? That whoever they’re attached to if they panic...”

“That would send a charge to the Uluani. It would damage them. They’re more vulnerable as a group than as individual. This is why there is a need to conduct a test with an emissary and ascertain that interlocutor is someone they can communicate with. ”

Mara's eyes are traitorously pulled back into the tank. Luke’s hair catches the scant light, looking pale as it ripples like a nimbus around his face. His eyes are closed, face utterly peaceful and beyond it all, and really, it’s a foregone conclusion from where she’s standing. You can’t get any further from stress than a floating Jedi Master. That kriffing tentacle just found its new best friend. 

“I guess not many of the interlocutors have had the Force,” she comments mildly.

“Not in my time caring for the second garden. We have had no Jedi visitors.”

The star of the show makes its appearance not too long after. It’s longer than Mara remembers, about as long as she is tall, maybe longer, slightly pink though the lighting glints white on it. The end furthest from her is as thick as her calf and it tapers to a slender point no thicker than her index finger. 

The Uluana has curled and uncurled its way from an opening near the bottom of the tank. She expects it to shoot towards Luke like the proverbial shadowmoth to a flame, but instead it turns to the transparisteel wiggling its way to where Ban Yu is and slaps itself on the glass.

“Ah,” Ban Yu has that mildly pleased note to his voice, “It’s saying hello. They always do.”

Mara looks to the tentacle stuck to the glass the line of suckers the size of her fingertips opening and closing. It’s underside is not pink actually, but a shining white. She’s seen weirder, she's sure.

“How...polite.” She glances at Ban Yu. “It knows you’re here?”

“Yes, they recognize vibrations to a degree of specificity scientists have found difficult to quantify.”

Apparently it’s done with its greetings, and unsticks itself from the glass, curling and uncurling itself, swimming, to approach Luke floating there with his eyes closed. For a few seconds the tentacle just hovers beside him, languidly curling and uncurling, as if scrutinizing him. 

Luke gently lifts his arm, lightly bent at the elbow, palm open. Given what Ban Yu said, it seems he’s offering the Uluana his left wrist to curl around.

It circles his forearm leaving plenty of space between it and Luke, wriggles away and loops back to nudge at the center of his palm, but quickly darts away. Something about the way it moves makes Mara think it’s _playing_. It wriggles faster, grazing the back of his palm as it swims up, behind him, then bumps the back of his right shoulder hard enough to shove him forward a bit, the water distorting Mara’s view as it swirls bubbles around. She thinks she sees the faint glimmer of a smile on Luke’s face as he extends his right arm in the same manner as his other.

“What’s it doing?” Mara asks with a frown, not quite knowing how to read that.

Ban Yu doesn’t sound surprised. “It’s introducing itself.”

The Uluana stops at his right hand presses the tip of itself to the center of Luke’s palm and wraps the top of itself lightly around it, tugs up then down.

Mara tamps down on a laugh. “That’s a handshake?”

Ban Yu nods.

The Uluana starts sliding across the back of Luke's palm, looping around his hand and over his wrist, snakelike as it slowly slithers up, but suddenly it lets go, letting itself float down to the bottom of the tank without moving...almost as if it's falling. At the bottom, it slowly curls up. Its movements now have a distinctly different tenor to Mara. Her head snaps towards Ban Yu. 

“What happened?” she asks just as he squats for a better look. 

The Uluana is at the bottom of the tank, curled up tighter and Mara’s stomach clenches. On some level she knows that means nothing good. “What’s going on?” 

“He failed the test,” Ban Yu says in his usual expressionless tone.

She’s reaching out...and breathes out. The Uluana is fine, but it’s...not okay. She can’t get anything more specific than that. It’s been some time, and it’s hard to keep her focus when touching such a different mind...

But the Uluana is already uncurling and wriggling its way out.

She reaches out towards Luke. Predictably, it’s white space, and she could kick herself.

Ban Yu goes up the stairs to the main deck, towards the towel rack.

Luke’s already gotten himself out of the tank. He's sitting along the edge hair wet, plastered against his head, water dripping down his face, eyes distant.

“What happened?” Mara calls.

Luke doesn’t answer, simply takes the towel Ban Yu offers him.

Mara squares her shoulders and breathes in through her nose. She turns to Ban Yu. “The Uluana is all right?”

“If it was able to leave, it is fine.”

“May I attempt it again?” Luke asks, looking up.

Ban Yu shakes his head. “No, the Uluana only do it once.”

“Wait,” Mara interjects. “What about another emissary?”

“To speak with one is to speak with them all.”

Luke vanishes into the ‘freshers to change while she tells Ban Yu, “What if it was just a mistake? A misunderstanding?” She thinks his _right_ hand -- "he has a pros--"

“A prosthesis wouldn't interfere -- the Uluani have interacted with beings with more significant physiological modifications, and he is a Jedi with the ability to communicate far more closely that any other visitor." 

“A _human_ Jedi,” she argues. “Direct mental communication does not eliminate the possibility of misunderstanding. It’s not human. It could have gotten scared by _anything_ , even something that didn’t exist.”

“The Uluani are not human. They interact with with an organism’s _chemistry_.”

“But body chemistry doesn’t mean anything. Maybe--maybe he was telling it not to be scared and it--it poked at him and he reacted -- that didn’t -- that didn’t mean he would _hurt_ it. It could be _anything_ misconstrued. Anything. Could you please talk to them for us?” 

“No. They decide.” After a moment he says, “It does not have to come to aggression. The Uluani’s fragility makes it so it reacts to perceived stress before the stress response its interlocutor can reach that point. It is exceedingly perceptive and careful.”

It takes a couple of seconds for that to sink in. 

And then...“Can you elaborate?” She leans towards Ban Yu.

"It’s highly unlikely an Uluana could live through a high stress response from an interlocutor," Ban Yu sums up. "Any inkling of discomfort past a threshold will discourage further communication.”

She stares off to the ‘freshers. “You’re saying _he_ got scared?”

Ban Yu continues impassively, “Fear is a higher order emotion that can be subject to interpretation.”

Mara rubs her forehead. “Okay, you’re saying he had some sort of stress response.” 

“Perhaps.”

“And the Uluana sensed it and left thinking it would...get it hurt?”

“Yes, the Uluani perceive stress as damaging itself.”

“So he got stressed and the Uluana felt that and got stressed.”

“A hypothesis.” Ban Yu muses, “An unexpected development. I was under the impression that Jedi could regulate physical response. There are stories of individuals able to hold their breathing past their species’ limits, of individuals consciously placing themselves in states of metabolic depression...”

“Metabolic depression?”

“Yes, lowering their body temperature, slowing their gas exchange, metabolism and heart rate.”

“He’s referring to a Jedi healing trance,” Luke speaks up, back in his Jedi regalia. Just the tone of it makes her want to turn around and say something snide. Anything close to sympathy swiftly turns into vapor. He probably didn't even hear all of what Ban Yu said because he adds, "That does exist, but obviously, it wouldn't help here."

It’s the principle though.

“The Uluani still have something that belongs to the Jedi Order,” she says. 

“That was entrusted to them,” Ban Yu corrects. “Technically it belongs to them.”

“Might we send someone else?” Luke asks. Mara just stares. Acquis isn’t _close_ and how many eligible Jedi are there to send on a task like this? 

It all seems like a terrible waste to her and she blurts out, “Would it communicate with me?”

Ban Yu and Luke speak at the same time.

“Yes.”

“No.”

Ban Yu continues, unruffled, and Mara focuses the whole of her attention on him. “They would,” he clarifies, “provided you seem like a an acceptable interlocutor in the test--”

Luke’s tone is even, but there’s strain under it. “There’s no need to trouble them. I’ll send another Jedi to ask--”

“All right then,” Mara tells Ban Yu. “When’s the Uluani’s earliest convenience?”

“No.” That’s sharp enough to jar her momentarily.

She slides her gaze onto Luke.

“You’re not part of the order.”

She swiftly turns back to Ban Yu. “Is this a problem? I can offer my own donation.”

Ban Yu seems to have taken that as a given. “It will depend on your own suitability as interlocutor.”

“If I pass the test and go through the second phase of communicating?”

“Yes, then you are free to ask, and they will honor the request.”

Luke interjects, “May I speak to Captain Jade for a second?”

“Cert--”

“I’ll do it,” Mara says. “As a private entity --”

“Mara, you don’t know what it entails.”

“It doesn’t require mastery of the Force, does it?” she asks Ban Yu, dripping fake concern into her voice.

“No.”

“Mara--”

“When did you say I could go through the test?”

“I will discuss the time with the emissary. Tomorrow this time, most likely.”

“Mara--”

She tells Ban Yu, “Great.”

Luke falls silent, jaw snapping shut. For a second, the lightning flash of upset that breaks on his face makes her recoil inwardly. But she only needs to think back to the measured, well-modulated tone of his voice as he said, _Of course, the Jedi Order will compensate you for the stolen Headhunter_ back at Yavin 4 months ago, or that placid _You can stay here_ just yesterday.

Ban Yu nods, mindless of the tension pouring from the Jedi Master beside him. 

“Well, it is decided then,” Ban Yu says. “I will take you upstairs for refreshment.”

“That would be wonderful,” Mara replies with a saccharine smile.


	2. Chapter 2

Ban Yu takes them back up to the lounge and floats the idea of a tour of the city, which Luke turns down. This makes the prospect even more appealing to Mara; she's already facing a week of being stuck with Luke in the _Luck_ on their way back. 

She and Ban Yu go over the time when she has to be at the dock and he leaves them in the lounge.

Luke just gets himself tea and goes to the transparisteel. “You should consider canceling with Ban Yu.”

She halts mid-bite on a strip of dried fish. “Excuse me?”

He doesn’t turn around. “The city tour. Spend that time centering yourself.”

The dried fish tastes like nothing suddenly. “He said it has nothing to do with the Force.”

“Doesn’t mean you can’t use the calm.”

Mara closes her eyes. He should take his own advice; the Uluana didn't toss itself from _her_ arm as if she were on fire. “I don’t need any calm, Luke.”

“Just a suggestion.”

Mara inhales slowly, quietly, and opens her eyes.

“Yeah,” she says breezily. “Thanks for that. I should go get ready. Enjoy your day.”

\--

Though this is the largest city in the planet, Uli-varit is largely an academic hub for the study of marine life. There's no clear majority among the species that live on Acquis, many of them are transplants from other aquatic planets who've settled from ages past. Many within the planet come, too, to interact with the Uluani, considered in some parts avatars for the gods, her Mon Calamari guide informs her as they flow around the various twisting corals with the other submarine traffic. 

His name is Nolbu, and he shows her a pendant he wears with a tentacle on it as he pilots the tiny two-seater submarine to a place they call Starfish Esplanade, a collection of pools, apparently popular with humanoids. The sides of the submarine are all transparisteel so she gets an uninterrupted view of the city below them too. Glimmering coral stretches wide like enormous orange leaves, the pillars of two pink cylindrical sponges beside it.

“I’m not a believer,” Nolbu says, “But my relatives were back at Mon Cala. We have myths about the Great Architects -- my people are said to come from them. But the myths say there were other creatures closer to them, closer to their mantle -- their main body. They say that when those creatures retreated to the depths of the planet that means a great cataclysm is soon to begin.”

Mara doesn't know a whole lot about the Mon Calamari belief system and the giant squids at the center of them, but she's more interested in facts than stories. “I wasn't aware Mon Cala had Uluani."

"We don't. Well, not anymore if the myths are to be believed. Mon Cala's great cataclysm already happened."

Mara supposes he means their civil war during the Clone Wars, but the imperial occupation of Mon Calamari flits through her head, the way whole city ships fled the planet. They found immediate allies in the nascent Rebellion lightyears away. All the while their Uluani stayed behind in the cold dark depths of the planet. It gives Mara a strange feeling, but it's just a myth. 

"I heard they’re...fragile.”

His bulbous head bobbing, Nolbu continues, “The myths also say that was the price paid when they detached from the Great Architects. We, who weren't as close to the mantle could leave the seas and go to the stars,. They remained in the depths, safer than us, but only if they kept to their own. Even here they have only a few trusted caretakers. Those beings are their only window to the outside, a limited window -- no one really knows what the Uluani see in either their caretakers or their interlocutors, despite the research offworlders have been allowed conduct. Their sentience is not like ours."

“I hear they won't communicate with just anyone," Mara comments.

"Chances are higher if you come from in-planet than off. The familiarity makes it so, having heard from them all our lives makes us more receptive."

"Receptive?" 

Nolbu stops to navigate between two schools of fish thick enough to obstruct their view. "They can tell who genuinely wants to commune with them," he continues after they start their approach to a massive cluster of cylindrical coral structure.

"Have you asked for an audience with them?”

“Yes. Everyone does here at some point.”

“What was it like?”

Nolbu's webbed hands move fluidly through the controls as they descend into an opening in the coral in a wave of subs. “Ticklish.”

\--

Mara decides to skip the masochistic affair that dinner back at the visitor center would be in favor of treating herself to dinner at the Shell Pools. She has her guide contact Ban Yu to let him know.

The temperature is warm in the pools, so named for the iridescent shells scattered around. It’s not glamorous the way the Mon Calamari Inglenook at Coruscant is, but cozier -- if such a thing can be possible in what is basically a stadium full of artificial lagoons that overlooks the ocean around her. 

Now that she’s habituated, she can better appreciate how everything moves, but something about it is different from the movement in urban spaces or in space lanes. It has to do with the density and viscousness of water, but she can’t get past that, and lets the thought go.

Mara only sees a couple of humans milling about, which goes with what everyone’s told her. It’s a far cry from the urban spaceports she’s used to moving about. Something about the relative solitude of it calls back memories of the academy and she scowls at herself. She’s only thinking about that because of Luke, and the fact that she’s here because of him. This place is nothing at all like that sweltering jungle and that dilapidated base. 

Her guide had left her his contact info, and after dinner, Mara figures she has to go back and comms him. Some time later she’s at the turbolift heading up to the room at the visitor center, a couple of bags in her hands, all the tranquility of the day leaking out of her with every step. 

Luke is in the same spot meditating, and she gets her things, heading to the ‘fresher to get ready for bed. He’s sitting on his bunk when she comes out, and her heart rate shoots up to a blasted pounding in her chest like she’s about to be ambushed.

“What is it?” she asks.

He looks up at her, ridiculous hair falling over his eyes. “I don’t suppose Ban Yu told you how the Uluani communicate.”

Mara shrugs. “They attach to you -- get signals from you and send signals back. It’s in the documents.” 

He pushes his hair back. “And you know what the signals are?” His voice is tight.

She pulls a face. “Are you quizzing me?”

Irritation flickers across his face for a bare instant before he replies in that flat voice, “No. I’m not. Signals refers to physiological responses. They vary species to species.” 

There’s red working itself from his neck, which makes this a lot more interesting suddenly, though his voice remains toneless. 

“In humans, the kind of response the Uluani garner is commensurate with a sexual response, according to extant documentation.”

Mara laughs and Luke’s gaze sidles up to her eyes. She thinks she could make this easy or intolerable.

She doesn’t really mean it when she muses, “But do the Uluani know?”

Luke’s eyes dart away uncharacteristically as he says, “They know. To some extent.”

Mara climbs into her bunk. “Huh.” She gets into a cross-legged position to meditate. That gives a whole new meaning to _handshake_...or _communion_. Once she might even have said that. Maybe they would have laughed.

Now she just mutters, “Friendly little things, aren’t they?”

There’s a thick silence, broken when Luke asks in an uncertain tone she hasn’t heard in a long time, “You’re okay with this?”

She already has her eyes closed.

Years since she’s heard that tone. Coruscant. Just before Karrde had called her up. Luke had been much more tolerable then. No Jedi robes, no default lecture setting. But then again, she'd seen a lot less of him there than at the academy, in spite of everything. Maybe that's just how it was when you got to know someone.

“Sure.” Mara replies, because while she wouldn't go search out an encounter similar to this one, in a controlled environment it's no different from any sort of involved, overpriced self pampering thing. They're such prudes in the Outer Rim.

Besides, even if she had any qualms, spite would be enough to blow them clear out of space.

"Why wouldn’t I be?" If she left it there that would be enough, but it’s _right_ there...Mara thinks of him wanting to leave her waiting for him in the _Luck_ as if she were just _any_ for-hire pilot.

” _You_ were about to," she continues smoothly, "it just didn’t work out for you.”

He doesn’t say anything else, and she starts her breathing cycle.

\--

The morning goes in a similar way as the previous. Ban Yu comes to collect them and lead them to the lounge area. Mara asks him several questions about the city, petrol silence trailing after she and Luke. She doesn't know if she's imagining the sullen tinge to it now.

While she has her tea, wishing vainly for caf, she almost spits out his line about staying in the room, but chooses restraint. Luke follows when Ban Yu shows up to pick her up. She excuses herself and has them wait while she goes back to the room to one of the bags with her purchases.

Ban Yu doesn’t react just takes them back down. Once there he gestures towards the 'freshers.

“What you will need--”

“I brought my own,” Mara informs him, padding off. It was a pretty credit, but the opportunity presented itself. Her aqua breather is a clip not too different from Luke’s. Her wetsuit though is opalescent, the gray of it changing color depending on the lighting. 

She feels a little foolish for wanting the Uluana to like it, but if they're able to read intention there's nothing like a solid action to buttress it.

Ban Yu nods as she comes into view. “Tunicate silk. Good choice.”

Luke stares everywhere but her until he realizes it's not actually translucent, which is an amusing enough reaction, that is, until he smiles a little and says, “Reminds me of that shiny flightsuit you came to the Praxeum with.”

She can't help scowling. That _shiny flightsuit_ is made of cutting edge eletrotex, and is a clear reminder why the private sector will always be two steps ahead in tech. She'd gifted it to herself after she’d brokered that supply line between Fondor and Giju without relying on the Rimma Trade Route. It's not some kriffing sequined party dress -- it's a flight-combat suit combo, lightyears ahead of that camo travesty the NR outfitted them with ages ago. The suit actually _changes_ color to blend in better with the environment. She can bet her life it’s more expensive than Luke’s entire wardrobe. More useful too.

"That's iridescent," she corrects tersely, and forces her lips into a smile. “Something iridescent has no translucent areas.”

And her wetsuit doesn't, but his mind wanders too far too fast, and she catches the involuntary snap of his eyes back towards the suit, before he can pull up some of that Jedi restraint -- beings take all that calm as more absolute than it really is in Mara's experience.

It’s not classified information that Luke finds her attractive. He might even be aware that the feeling is shared, but possibly feels about it like she does about him -- that sheer impossibility to separate form from content. And while she doubts he gives it mind past that, _she_ does. In some ways, knowing that it’s the _rest of her_ that he's come to find disappointing is worse than if he didn't find her attractive at all.

So rewarding as it is to see color rise up his face like mercury, she turns around and goes through some breathing exercises at the edge of the tank. That’s not why she got the wetsuit. She'd spent half of yesterday swimming at the pools, she hadn't been about to do it in a rented one.

Spite motivates her to climb into the tank before it’s filled. The water rises quickly, and she rolls her shoulders as the water’s poured in through several hoses. She can see through the glass, which is a pity, but she tries not to think about fish bowls and stages too much, and focuses on thinking of the tank as a filling bathtub, thinking of the pools yesterday. The water is cooler, but not terribly uncomfortable as it quickly rises up to her calves then her waist. She doubles checks her breathing clip as it reaches her shoulder, flipping her braid over her shoulder and takes one last breath before slipping it in her mouth. She settles herself, closing her eyes, and the water goes over her head.

Once it does, she opens her eyes again. Of course, it’s uncomfortable, her vision distorted, the salt not helping, but she adjusts, squinting at first, then opening her eyes wider. She blinks a few times until it’s not bad. 

Mara kicks off, circling the tank, not relishing the idea of just remaining stationary like some sort of hanging ornament, bait. The motion has the happy consequence of distracting from the glass. She does a couple of passes then kicks her legs to go deeper down the tank as an exercise. The pressure in her head won’t keep her there, so she swims up and circles the tank again, before diving back down, trying to arrange herself vertically for the challenge of it. Something pink flashes in her vision, undulating in the water.

Ah. The Uluana has arrived.

Mara watches it for a second as it slaps the glass to say hello to Ban Yu. Her gaze skids over the glass, but fortunately Ban Yu and Luke are just dark outlines, so she’s spared Luke's expression of blank aloofness as he waits for her to kriff it up.

Mara turns her attention to the Uluana hovering maybe just a couple of feet from her, gently curling and uncurling. She’s momentarily tempted to return to her usual position, head above her feet, and stops kicking her legs. Rather than aligning herself to a standing position, she goes into a breaststroke, swimming around the Uluana. The top of it seems to follow her, possibly the ripples she’s leaving in the water.

If she were more adept with the Force she could communicate with it... _strange that you didn’t_ , blares across her head, and her teeth go on edge. But just because she can’t communicate with them through mind touch, doesn’t mean it can’t read from her. So she does another pass around it as she thinks, _hello, hello_.

The Uluana bends forward, at first Mara thinks it’s bowing, but that’s a human gesture and a specific one at that. It turns out the Uluana is just swimming in place, making a small loop. 

Impulsively, Mara straightens up and copies the movement, tossing herself into a backwards dive. The Uluana swims towards her, suddenly very close, but it leaves space as it circles her waist. The gesture -- if it can be called that -- is similar to the one it made yesterday with Luke, except around his forearm.

She follows it in what she imagines is an ungainly weave -- maybe she should have sprung for flippers -- spiraling up around the Uluana.

They continue like that for a bit, the Uluana settling into a pattern of swimming and Mara trying to mimic. It’s work, and her muscles start to burn, but it’s also interesting, _some_ sort of communication.

 _See, I can play. I won't hurt you. I just want to play_ , she thinks at it. This is how she can ask for the holocron, it comes to her. _We can play. I can amuse you and you can give me an old trinket you have no use for..._

Trying to imitate a particular complex set of loops, her breath clip falls, and she feels a twinge of alarm through the Force.

It’s a momentary thing because just as she’s extending her hand to call it, the Uluana is right there, holding it by the side. It pushes it forward, and Mara is about reach for it, but tilts her head looking at it as it curls and uncurls, the water bubbling with its movement. It pushes the apparatus towards her slightly, but jerkily, as if it’s insisting, _take it_.

She raises her head towards it and blows a bubble, clearing the last of her air. Her lungs protest, but she ignores it and parts her lips, thinking at it, _See, I'm okay, give it back to me_?

The Uluana curls forward, the side of it grazing against Mara’s cheek as it pushes the clip to her. Her lips close around it and she can breathe again. The Uluana stays where it is, by her cheek, its skin smooth where Mara had expected it to be bumpy.

 _Thank you_ , she thinks at it with a smile.

It pats her cheek lightly, and Mara feels a slight tingle, almost imperceptible at first. Then she wants to laugh. It’s signaling. The Uluana wriggles down the curve of her jaw, and it _does_ tickle a bit. Mara moves her neck slightly. The Uluana adds more pressure, just a bit more and stops, remaining motionless for a few seconds, as if letting her get used to it.

Mara smiles again -- can it feel the gesture? -- she trails a fingertip along the top of the part of the Uluana touching her jaw and cheek, before she removes her hand. The Uluana snakes down further and curls past her jaw, wrapping loosely behind her neck for an instant before slithering across her back. It comes back out her opposite hip, looping around the front of her legs, tightly enough that it actually rotates her as it loops out, and in a flurry of bubbles, it’s gone. 

Or rather, it’s before her again, reaching up.Mara's gaze follows where it’s reaching up -- her braid floating above her head in a slender, dark line. The tip of the Uluana curls around the end of it.

She flashes it a warning look. _No yanking._

It doesn’t. Mara doesn’t know what it’s doing until there’s a mass of bubbles rippling out and one by one a series of very slight tugs. Curious, she turns her head side to side, and sees a black ring floating by, her hair tie, half hidden by her hair, now floating free. 

She reaches up and to the side to grab the tie, and the Uluana quickly curls around her wrist. It squeezes lightly, making the skin of Mara's wrist prickle. The Uluana loops around her forearm next, front to back, tight, but not uncomfortable. Wriggling to her upper arm, it snakes to her shoulder and across. It stops then and pats her shoulder, inching forward tentatively, and stops again.

Mara doesn’t know how to interpret that.

It pats gently just at her shoulder, slowly inches forward. Stops. 

Pat.

Mara stays very still. The Uluana repeats the same motion, and it’s not until it’s half around her neck that Mara realizes it’s been asking for permission, testing out her responses. She lifts her other hand and brings it to the part of the Uluana around the middle of her upper arm and squeezes gently.

_Go on._

The Uluana makes a twitchy motion, then snakes around her neck, its tip just over her pulse, pleasantly warm even through the wetsuit, and she realizes she'd expected it to be slimy, but it doesn't feel like that at all, though it's vaguely slippery. It signals again, making her skin tingle. She finds she likes the constriction around her arm too. 

The Uluana tip slithers up slowly from her pulse to the corner of her jaw where it rubs gently.

 _It’s nice_ , she thinks at it, having no idea what it’s getting. Has to be positive though. _So how am I doing_?

The tip of it once again brushes against the corner of her jaw, very very gently and signals slightly. Mara shivers, wanting to laugh at the strangeness of it all. 

There’s a squeeze along her arm, a gentle pat at the corner of her jaw and the Uluana is fluidly slithering away, until it’s curling and uncurling before her. It does one last quick loop around her ankles and swims away.

\--

Mara’s shivering once she gets out of the tank, but her moody is wholly transformed. That had to have been good. Successful. She can feel it. She sits on the steps, waiting for Ban Yu and Luke to come up, an odd kind of giddiness building up as she wrings the water from her hair. 

“We can continue the second phase tomorrow,” Ban Yu says and she nods as he goes to get her a towel.

Of course, the first thing Luke says is, “You lost your breathing clip.”

She's not going to let it make a dent in her good mood, she decides.

“I was going to get it, but it did me the favor. It’s friendly.” And just because he’s a goading jerk, she looks up at him and hits back with a flat, “How strange it didn’t work out for you.”

Mara doesn't grace him with a glace after, opting to walk towards Ban Yu who has just returned with her towel. 

\--

Back at the lounge Ban Yu suggests a trip to the seagrass meadows that encircle the city. Mara eagerly accepts thinking she’ll have a day like yesterday. Instead of walking towards their room though, Luke follows along to the dock asking Ban Yu questions about the city, and Mara realizes they must have discussed him coming along beforehand, kark it all. 

But it's fine, she tells herself, she’s not going to let it affect her day.

The guide is different today, a Nautolan that introduces himself as Dorl. They shoot between the corrals as high as skyscrapers in a sub larger than the one that had brought them and the one that Mara traveled in yesterday, thankfully. 

Mara ignores the way Luke’s stuck in breathless wonder to the larger viewer beside him as Dorl gives him the breakdown of the city. He certainly wasn't that way the first time, but it could have been that squashed as they'd been hadn't been the best condition for taking in the view. The ocean around them grows darker as the city recedes, and there’s just what seems like an endless stretch of murky green below them. 

“It’s like Yavin,” he murmurs.

Dorl had just cut the engines, leaving them floating, the grasses undulating gently beneath them. “Yavin?”

Luke turns, his eye skidding over Mara. She turns her head to look at the panorama, and pretends she has no idea what he's talking about. It looks quiet to her. Peaceful like everything here. It’s the water, forcing things to slow down. 

“It’s jungle planet. Mostly rain forests.” There’s that slight note of awe in his voice. He's gone back to looking through the glass. “Alive like this.”

“Ah,” Dorl says. “We have forests. This seagrass bottom is not as deep as the seas go. It’s a surface layer. There are true sea forests below, but life is different there. Not so hospitable for humanoids.”

“Is that where they say the Uluani come from?” Mara asks even though she suspects the answer. Some things don’t really have an origin outside of conjecture.

Dorl shakes his head. “No, they are said to come from much deeper than that.”

\--

They end up at the Starfish Esplanade again, because Luke hasn’t seen it, and Mara hadn't cared to mention that this was where she spent her day yesterday. The complex is huge, and she'd only stayed at the pools; she can probably go elsewhere. Their guide leaves them at the docks and they take the turbolift wordlessly. She senses Luke wanting to say something, but the turbolift ride is mercifully fast. Mara all but dashes out once the doors open.

She's not going to let him ruin her day. She isn't.

Mara stops at the same tapcafe she had dinner at last night for caf and looks through her datapad at the Esplanade's other offerings. It’s been some time since she’s piloted a submarine and she’s curious how much she's forgotten. The center does offer some hourly rentals, and she decides on that. She’s not terribly ambitious, only wants to do a circuit around the Esplanade. A bounded track offered to novices behind the structure near the docks and a set of one-person submarines to choose from make this straightforward. She chooses one based on a recognizable instrument panel.

Piloting a submarine however, is difficult, and she suspects it's gotten more so since she first learned. The response time of a sub is far more sluggish than she’s used to on a spaceship. Work at the controls is predictive in a different way; because of that, whatever change she makes, she needs make well before the sub has actually finished the turn or whatever motion it's making. It’s a little frustrating, feels like the sub is stalling all the time, but just for that she keeps at it until lunch passes.

She’s starving when she comes back into the main area of the complex and stops at a different tapcafe. At least she got to brush up on some old skills.

Given that she has an encounter with the Uluani tomorrow, Mara returns to the pools, but the scene feels different knowing that Luke is here somewhere. The memories are too close. How long has it been since she left the academy? Three months at most? She hasn’t bothered to keep track.

The pools have a variety of life used to humanoids so she occupies herself freediving. The areas go pretty deep and even with a breathing clip she has to keep coming back up. It's good practice anyway. 

As she goes through another dive she thinks it’d been clear with the lightsaber. To come to Yavin 4 meant to train, and she’d thought she could then. She’d imagined it for months before she took leave -- Karrde being none too happy about it _or_ convinced that she was really doing it to be better for the Smuggler's Alliance, she could tell. He, in fact, had been just a little more happier than Luke, who hadn't been thrilled, to put it lightly, at hearing the same reasoning. But honestly what had Luke expected? She couldn’t just naively throw herself into things without seeing if reality stacked up to what she'd anticipated.

And regardless, she’d ended up right to do that. The reality had been batting at remotes with Kam for three quarters of the day and meditation for the last quarter. She knew better than anyone, better than all the Jedi wannabes at that stanging academy how training felt. Not like that.

A school of yellow fish swim by and Mara stops to stare, the color bleeding bright in the murky blue of the water.

It had looked a lot like Luke walking around with Kyp talking to him in low hushed tones.

A turtle the length of her arm swims beside her for a while before disappearing from view behind one of the corals.

Kyp, who threw around accusations in a fit. The eighteen year old who annihilated Carida.

The night Kyp had stolen her ship to go on his murderous rampage, Luke had told _her_ to calm down, and then just moments later, that she'd be compensated for her stolen Headhunter, like she'd been just another inconvenience all along.

Mara comes back up for air and lingers at the sandy artificial shore. Two green Twi’lek are talking among themselves at a distance. A Mon Cal youth floats in one of the shallower lagoons. Two Belugan females are in a friendly swimming race past that. Other than that the place is largely empty.

 _Kyp_ should have gotten Anakin Skywalker’s lightsaber. He’d kriffing earned it. 

It makes her sick. 

She’d stopped carrying it after she returned from Yavin, stowed it away because she got tired of looking at it and wondering whether she should give it back. She knows why she doesn’t, but she hates thinking about it. She should be better about letting things go. Like she hasn’t learned anything.

Mara goes to sit by her bag away from the water, breathing clip in hand. She leaves it on her chair as she towels off. Maybe Karrde has messaged her about her next project. She leaves her towel beside the clip as she goes for her datapad. 

The tiniest nudge through the Force makes her head snap up. Luke is heading her way. Why doesn't his tunic look more out of place? 

She continues looking for her datapad even as his boots crunch on the sand by her. 

“I didn’t know where you’d gone,” he says conversationally. “Since you went to the docks. I thought you might have left.”

Mara shakes her head, sitting back on her heels, looking up at him. The fake sunlight above them makes her squint. “Dorl is coming back here and besides, there’s enough to see.”

“I’ll say." He looks out to the lagoons beyond them. "They have races in one of the lower levels. Submarines not much bigger than missiles.” 

She thinks of driving the sub. “Probably more exciting to watch than to participate. Piloting one’s not that fun.”

He cocks his head as his gaze returns to her. “The water density.”

She nods once. “You can try it out if you’re curious. The docks let you take one of their single-rider subs out.”

“Actually, I was getting hungry and wondering about you.”

Mara shakes her head, because she's definitely not feeling up to a dinner full of either heavy silences or covert swipes -- be they imagined or not. Even if they continue with this kind of inane chitchat, it’s still intolerable to her. It's all intolerable to her. This was a mistake.

“I’m not," she says, slipping her breathing clip back in her bag. "I just got back. Had a late lunch.”

“You just got here?” he echoes as she stands.

She nods again, leaning to grab the towel.

“How is it?” His eyes flicker towards the pools again.

“It’s nice.” She’s had enough of this insipid conversation and adjusts her bag more comfortably as she straightens up. “But I spent all of yesterday here. You should check it out.” She heads over to the ‘freshers.

Mara stops once she’s inside, her shoulders drooping, an odd weariness in her. The dismal mood has no reason to be. She’s had a good day. She passed the Uluana’s test, she did something _productive_ in working with the sub. There's no reason to feel sore.

It’s time to press Karrde more about that project of his. Even if she’s not that interested. She never does that well when things slow down. It’s not in her nature. She changes into her tunic, and goes to one of the Esplanade's viewing areas, sits on one of the couches going over her messages. Nothing. Worse, she actually feels relieved.

Mara sighs. She shouldn't. Carrying on like this isn't any better. She stands up and wanders around the Esplanade some more.

When she goes to dinner some time later, she passes by the tapcafe where she had her caf. Luke is there, the only human among a loud mass of Mon Calamari, Draedans, Selkaths, and Quarren all huddled around him. She only sees him in pieces, the angle of his shoulder, the cream color of his sleeve, maybe the shadow of his face in profile, but a blink and it's all gone. 

Figures he’d get notice even in a place like this, she thinks, walking briskly away, her hand tightening on her bag. 

\-- 

Dorl gets them at the previously agreed upon time and they zoom back to the visitor’s center. Mara finds herself looking forward to turning in. Too much swimming perhaps. She'll feel more refreshed after a good night's sleep. 

She climbs into her bunk wanting to get the meditation out of the way before she goes through the rest of her evening routine. Her focus isn’t there, it’s not her best session. Luke comes back from his own evening rituals just as she’s gathering her clothing to go change into her sleep tunic. 

He greets her with a sharp, “What would you even do with the holocron even if you get it?”

She freezes. It’s not the words, it’s the tone that comes out of nowhere. “ _If_?”

His voice is back to blankly informative as he sits on his bunk. “There's a margin of error.”

She's not even sure she's hearing right, but the response is near automatic. “What? No. I'm going to get it." Mara heads to the doorway. "They've already decided I'm suitable," she says and if she's smug, well, she's earned the right. "This is just a formality.” 

“It's actually the _substance_ of what they ask for. ”

Mara scowls. Pedantic asshole. "Call it whatever you want," she turns around, "the point is they're going to give me the holocron."

He crosses his arms over his chest, sighing a little. “You don’t care.”

“And neither do _they_ ," she snaps, over the surprise that he's really doing this. Really doing this. Right now. "Stop being so sore about failing their test, Luke. It doesn’t suit that puffed up Jedi Master image you’re trying so hard to give.”

“I could be utterly transparent like you," he continues in that same insufferable above-and-beyond-everything tone. "Then maybe you could get the confrontations you seem to enjoy so much.”

“At least I don’t bury my head in the dirt wishing for my conflicts to go away.”

He spreads a hand, obsequious. “No, you prefer to chase them down.”

“Beats letting them make everything collapse around me,” she snarls back.

“Nothing is collapsing, Mara.”

“Maybe your head is too deeply in the dirt to see.”

“But you can." There's an angry glint in his eyes in spite of the level tone. "With those powers of discernment you have.”

For a split second, she can’t even _think_ over the desire to slap the datapad off the table. It's not the sarcasm, obvious as it may be. No it's the lack it in his tone rather, as if he can't even kriffing _bother_ \-- 

Luke just stands there arms folded calmly over his chest.

“You’re one to talk,” she pushes out, gathering herself, “about discernment.”

“Tell me about my discernment, Mara. Maybe it'll be something different than I’ve heard from everyone else.”

She bites down so hard her jaw hurts. She's not going to get goaded. She isn’t. Everything is on her side here. Everything. She's got not a blasted thing to prove. Not one.

“ _When_ I get that holocron," she finally says, low like her best ultimatums. "The academy is going to buy it from me.”

One shake of his head. Matter of fact. “No. It’s not.”

She raises a shrug. “I'll sell it to someone else.”

Luke just meets her eyes evenly, and she can see it then. That’s what he’d want, get it from someone else -- cut her out completely. A trap, and she’d pranced right into it, like a fool.

She feels herself stumbling, sinking, and blurts out, “Or I’ll just kriffing get rid of the stanging thing.”

He lifts his chin slightly. “That would be easy for you.”

A distant part of her screams to let this go, to pull back, but she can’t. She can’t walk out of here without exacting at least a bruise.

“At least I won’t be lying to myself." She needs to stop. "I’ll actually _make_ that decision," she seethes. Stop. "Instead of standing around." She's off course, she's building too much speed. "Doing absolutely _nothing_." And she can't even _see_. "Telling myself I’m all the wiser for it. Even Corran _told_ you about Kyp and you did _nothing_ , you've done _nothing_ , and _nothing_ justifies the neglect and carelessness of just letting _your_ apprentice obliterate _billions_ , might as well have killed them all yourse --”

He interrupts her with a barked out laugh, the sound dark and choked. 

“That’s what this trip was about for you, wasn’t it? Does it feel as satisfying as you thought?”

She dashes forward to grab the datapad on the desk, but the datapad is simply whisked away and gently deposited on his bunk.

Even though his voice is flat, she hears contempt in it when he says, “Break something else.”

For a split second she genuinely doesn't know what she'll do, the feeling finally frightening enough that she finally heeds that screaming voice inside of her and turns around, rushing out the room and down the hall.


	3. Chapter 3

Some time later lights flicker hazily in the distance visible through the glass of the empty tank. Mara has been looking and looking listlessly.

Is that the Uluani colony? Her Mon Cal guide had mentioned myths of them going back to the depths as a sign of a coming apocalypse. For their safety.

The reflection of her on the glass blinks. This is the same tank where she’d met the Uluana, several floors below their level, and she thinks, depths -- what lies beneath that she can’t see -- have never struck her as all that safe.

She'd been on autopilot when she came here. The room’s lights had gone on to their dim setting once she'd walked in, and she’d unthinkingly padded down the stairs by the empty tank, stood in front of it to stare at the dark water. She knows there's no water inside tank now, but the walls are transparisteel; she can see the dark blue ocean beyond them. It makes the tank look full, but it’s an optical illusion. It's full of nothing.

Mara closes her eyes and thinks of the seagrass meadow, the algae’s gentle undulation, thinks of driving the sub -- that lag in input and response and follow up. 

She does so badly whenever she’s supposed to slow down.

But maybe she needs to slow down and realize what she hasn’t wanted to see. It’s a feeling just at the edge of her awareness for a while now. She's not sure since when, but it's getting harder to ignore.

She’s stuck. 

She’s been with Karrde for nearly four years now and she’s made him an impressive amount of credits. Very soon her savings will give her the chance to make her own ship to her specifications. And she’d use it...to make more credits for Karrde. 

It’s not that it’s him. She can think of no better person to work under. It’s just that it’s credits for someone else.

And is that all there is? 

Mara opens her eyes and blows out a breath that clouds the glass. Of course it takes a major fuck up for her to really look at it. Namely this whole karking trip. And that still leaves her the problem of what to do with this _insight_.

At least, she thinks grimly, drawing a slow line through the condensation with the tip of her index finger, it’ll give her something to chew on during what’s shaping up to be an unpleasant trip back. Another one for her collection.

She rubs her fist gently on the condensation. So Luke thinks she's a brute; she's always known that. It puts him in with ninety nine percent of the beings she interacts with. Mara drops her hand. Karrde himself has obliquely asked her to use a lighter hand sometimes. Once it was different, but that was ages ago when putting on a face had been fun. She knows exactly who she is now and keeps to it.

And she’s _right_.

Mara lets her hand fall. She’s right.

But that's not why she agreed to this trip. _He's_ wrong about that. There’s a clenched up feeling at her sternum. It’s no longer anger, something else, heavier that closes her throat. She lets it for a bit, sliding down to lie beside the glass, hand dragging down. To have said those things... It's apalling. She's apalling.

She should go back. She has no idea how taxing tomorrow will be with the Uluani, she needs to settle down and rest.

Mara considers calling Ban Yu and asking for other accommodations. Surely there must be other rooms. She can always pay extra.

No. She’s going to go back, and apologize like a decent sentient, crawl into her bunk, and make herself ignore that Luke’s there, turn him inconsequential for the rest of this disaster. It doesn’t matter if she’s never had much success -- even when he’d blatantly sidelined her in the academy, and she’d told herself she wouldn’t care, even when she’d told herself she’d ignore the lightsaber; that didn’t mean she _had_ to come to Yavin to train. Luke had said as much.

She still had.

But Luke...if Kyp hadn’t stolen her Headhunter, if she’d just left, would he have even noticed her gone? 

Probably not. It’s always been _her_ , her trying to go back to when just the staticky radio of her Force abilities could coax from Luke the same expression the field of seagrass did. But those days are long gone, and even feeling how she does, she wouldn't want them back. Not for anyone. 

Mara looks into the tank some more, and feels it when Luke enters the room upstairs. Her stomach takes a deep dive, even though objectively there's nothing surprising about it. He's probably been waiting to be the bigger person all this time. She quickly pulls herself into a sitting position, straightening her back.

He’s stopped about midway through the room, she feels it clearly because he’s telegraphing it, asking without asking, his reach through the Force probing gently at her white space.

Her center is back in place. She’ll keep it there this time, she resolves. Even if it's a kriffing lesson. She'll let it go for once.

Mara places a hand on the glass focusing on the cool of the glass on her open palm, its smoothness.

_Break something else._

Mara stares at her palm on the glass. For all his knowledge in Jedi bantha shit, Luke has lost his ability to see her, or rather, he no longer cares to. If he did, he'd know breaking, like building, has always taken effort from her. An immense effort at times. Even with things that deserve breaking off.

Luke is unmoving. His search through the Force has stopped.

If she let some of her anger seep out, he’d leave her to cool off some more. If she let gloominess seep out it might be time for a nice, soft-spoken lecture. Avoid or teach. Is there an in-between with him as far as she’s concerned? She’s just part of the mass, only more annoying -- and that's only because she's _made herself_ that way. Nothing is worse than outright dismissal. Nothing.

Mara keeps herself on the feeling of the glass as condensation drips from it.

He’s on the move, briskly. Once Luke decides on something he’s not a waffler. She sighs and comforts herself with the thought that she can leave the minute he starts droning. In a _civil_ way this time. She feels balanced enough not to make a total fool of herself again.

An apology, she thinks, like a decent sentient, and rehearses it in her head, eyes wandering to the stairwell. Her stomach clenches. _I apologize for..._

His feet come into view in the slippers provided to them in the room. He’s wearing his loose sleep tunic and the robe from the room open over it, like he’s some harmless, unassuming houseguest, appearance utterly deceiving.

Mara stares as his steps slow down. He doesn't stop until he’s at the landing maybe fifteen feet away.

The apology vanishes.

“What do you want?” she whispers, and in a moment of rank cowardice, turns back to the glass. 

_I apologize_ , she tries to visualize saying it in her head again, and even that takes effort now with him here. She clenches her jaw at herself. She just kriffing called him a mass murderer by negligence. It's beyond the pale. Any normal sentient would have no qualms about walking it back. What the kriff is wrong with her? 

His voice is soft. “To talk...clear the air.”

Right. It’s unbecoming for a Jedi Master to leave things like this, and with an erstwhile apprentice no less. She knows that.

Mara watches through the reflection in the glass when he sits on the bench around five feet behind her. He stays quiet for a long time and she tries again to push out an apology, but can't. And she...maybe she should leave, but she knows that's not a workable solution either. Stuck.

“I would want to start with something light,” he finally says. “Ask you about the Esplanade, but I think you’d think it’s not genuine somehow. And if I went straight into what just happened...It might stir things up again.”

“I’m familiar with the precepts of conflict resolution,” she mutters.

He makes a soft grunt, even through the glass she sees his expression darken slightly. “Why?”

Mara raises her head, hearing the rest of it as if he’d spoken, _why are you like this?_ and her answer is ready at hand. “All that rhetoric is just another way of being above everything. Look at the all-seeing Jedi Master--”

“It’s not,” he says sharply enough that she quiets just out of surprise that she’d get a rise out of him so soon. He modulates his voice again as he continues, but there’s strain in it that won’t smooth out. “You have this image of me in your head--”

She bites off, “Is it? An image in my head. That all it is?”

At that he sets his jaw, and there's that angry flash in his eyes. As always, that and the clipped quality of his words is all he allows himself. A tribute to being mortal like the rest of them. “I do what I have to. You have no--”

Mara turns her head to look at him and punches through, “So if _you have to_ why is it just an image in my head?”

Luke goes silent. She gets a feeling he's biting back on a response. Fine. Whatever.

Suddenly, he blurts out, “I told you about the garbage masher at the first Death Star, right?”

The nonsequitor makes her turn around. “What?”

“I did, didn’t I? When we got Karrde out.” He waves a hand. “Before we got to the _Chimaera_ way back.”

Mara scowls. “Are you doing that 'open with something light, common ground' bantha shit you just said?”

“No.” The clipped tone is back. “Humor me. You remember?”

She bites the inside of her cheek. Luke’s old exploits are nothing she cares to discuss right now, especially if he means them as a frame for some idiotic teaching moment. “Vaguely.”

“So it was Han, Leia, and I in the sewage and I feel something wrap around my ankle -- “

Mara shakes her head. “I really don’t see why you’re wasting our time with this, Luke--”

“You’re infuriating,” he says quietly.

“Don't pretend that's new,” she snaps, turning towards him. “ _I_ haven’t changed.”

“That’s wrong. _We_ have.”

“ _You_ have. And on we go.” She turns back to the glass. “I’ve always been the way I am.” Under her breath, she adds, “Used to slide right off you.”

He catches that. “You used to call me ‘Skywalker’ a lot more then.”

She stops and lifts her eyes to his reflection on the glass. She did, didn’t she? Now, he’s just Luke. Luke under the pretentious robes. Luke, no matter how many vapeheads call him Master. She remembers the moment she decided he would be, right as Yavin materialized in front of her viewscreen. Surely, if that was his old lightsaber at her belt she'd earned that too. 

She arches an eyebrow, which she knows he can see through the glass. "What's your point? I can call--"

“And you’re infuriating to everyone,” he interrupts with a lift of his chin. “You and Corran almost got into it your first night at the academy. You kept calling Tionne’s ballads ‘Jedi Storyholo Hour’ to her face; I don’t think you stayed for a single one. Sometimes I thought you came to Yavin looking for a fight and anyone would do--”

That deserves a shrug. “So your Jedi--”

“But I’m not talking about them.” He breaks away from her gaze, looking to his hands at his lap. “I spent so long waiting for you to come to Yavin 4.” A wistful note curls under the words, and immediately rubs something raw in her. 

Mara closes her eyes. It's not the first time he's broached it. But it's actions that matter, because when she did show up nothing went the way she'd thought. Nothing, she reminds herself; he probably said that to all of the apprentices. “You know, I couldn’t--”

“That’s not it either.” He might have learned a thing or two about interrupting from her, and she purses her lips. “It’s that you brought certain...expectations of what you wanted.” 

But now there’s a tightness in her throat that prevents her from speaking, that wistful note pulling insistently at her though she knows it means nothing. 

"Don’t you ever wonder why the person you were least combative at the academy with was Kam?”

Her stomach twists, because that's another direction entirely, and not a welcome one. “Solusar and I understand each other.”

Luke meets her eyes through the glass. 

“You can say it.” She focuses on the lower left side of the glass, hating herself for that too. It's been years.

“It has nothing to do with Palpatine," he replies immediately, his tone decisive, even if he qualifies it, “Not directly. You know that.” She looks up when he goes on. “It has everything to do with a type of discipline that both of you were raised with."

The statement lingers in the air for a few seconds before Luke goes on, "I...that’s a very small part of what I see Jedi becoming.” He looks down again, earlier confidence seeping away. “I tried for you to see that...and I...I couldn’t.”

He sighs softly. "Jedi aren't soldiers, Mara."

It's the kind of failure that feels like fate. 

There's that clenched up feeling again. She'd wondered at first how Kam had taken to the academy, but she'd never resented him. Kam might have felt the same poison for as long she had, but he'd drank from it in a way she hadn't, walked paths that no one else in the academy had, not even Luke, and he'd come _back_ from that.

Luke's voice draws her from her thoughts. “And I thought you'd know you’re nothing like Kyp,” Luke’s voice sounds more apprehensive than awed, increasingly despondent with every word, “I thought if I kept close watch...” 

His voice trails off, but becomes steadier with the next. “Even if all of that hadn’t happened...you’re past that kind of apprenticeship. You’ve been past it since I met you. This time around you made no bones about how lacking you found me as a teacher and how much I was wasting your time.” He stops. “You remember arguing against those reflections on the Jedi Code I passed you? It was a little before you left.”

Mara flips her braid over her shoulder. “Not really.”

“You called the documents vague and boring. And then you accused me of being lazy and letting documents teach for me, and then you reminded me you didn't come to train as a Jedi, and with my approach, you'd never want to.”

Mara shifts a bit. Put that way, it's uncharitable. She honestly doesn't remember, but she knows she skimmed it, at least; she’d given a try to everything he’d given her, but philosophy had never been her orientation. All those treatises said the same thing, _feel this, feel that_. She couldn't. She hadn't even known _how_ , and every time she sat down all she saw was Karrde's impassive face, chiding mutely, you took leave to be ignored and read about _feelings_?

It'd felt a lot like being stuck too, actually.

“And that was...infuriating. Because what was in there was the same thing I _had_ been telling you or,” a small bitter laugh escaped him, “trying to help you see...and nothing I tried...just nothing...”

She doesn’t want to hear this.

“If you weren’t...manipulating objects, or honing your fight reflexes, you didn’t care. You said as much. Emphatically. Repeatedly.” He looked away. "And more cuttingly."

Mara swallows and pulls her hands to her lap, rubs her fingers over the palm of her hand. 

“At first, I...I’d hoped I could convince you otherwise about the worth of training...because it was me, because you trusted me, but it felt more and more like I was just like everyone else. Wasting your time, like you said.” His voice drops even more as if it’s a confession, “But even worse, feeling that way was also clouding me to the fact that at bottom...what you wanted, you weren’t going to find at the academy. It had never been up to me.” 

Luke stands up. For a second, her stomach churns at the stab of _he’s done with me_ , but he only comes to sit next to her several paces over. There’s space enough for about three humans to sit between them.

He looks fixedly towards the glass, his shoulders slumping a little. “I don’t think it was the right time for you to train.” He turns his head to meet her eyes. “Not because you can’t. You just don’t _want_ to be a Jedi. You came to the academy as a fighter. To be even an even better one. But you don't need training for that. And I...I didn’t know how to dissuade you. Even giving you space to realize it for yourself only made you...angrier and I...” His voice grows even more quiet. “There was so much _else_ going on, I came to it too late. You were gone."

He lets a few beats pass. "So I failed there, too.” And she hears it overlaid, _I failed you, too_.

At least he didn't say it out loud.

All is quiet for a few seconds, while Mara lifts her gaze beyond the tank. She’d thought it was a matter of going to the academy and picking up a few skills. She'd been trained before -- this made her leagues above anyone else, _better_ than anyone else. But it _hadn't_ been like her past training at all; somehow she couldn't do anything right anymore.

Making enemies though, facing down opponents is the easiest thing there is.

Mara closes her eyes.

“So there we are.” Mara guesses he’s going back to his story, while her head keeps puzzling at all he'd said; it's almost too much to take in at once, “Me, Han and Leia, in the trash, and I feel something pass by my leg, then wrap around it.”

Wait. “ _In_ the trash compactor?”

He nods.

She can’t help the dismay that comes over her.

A small smile comes over Luke’s face at her reaction, and it’s jarring when she realizes it’s just been that long, since she's seen anything close to it.

“And...,” he stops for the anticipation for so long she’s about to snap at him for it, “it pulls me under.”

“Oh, kriff,” she almost shudders, “a karking garbage squid.”

He nods, expression returning to something more abashed. “I’d actually forgotten until...” He tilts his head towards the tank in front of them.

Mara blinks, and a gasped, “No,” tumbles out of her mouth. A dianoga feels to the Uluana, as much like a mangy clawbird is to a brilliant firebird.

His next nod was slower. 

“You would think,” he begins thoughtfully, “with the...collection of experiences I’ve amassed... but no, just the way it curled around my arm. It was even my arm not my leg -- and it wasn’t trying to pull me anywhere. But it felt me...just a split second recoil, I thought. I had it under control, I thought. But it knew and...it was scared. Thought I would...hurt it.” 

Silence falls between them for a few beats. When he speaks it’s almost to himself. “I don’t think I’ll ever get used to getting that reaction.”

Mara doesn’t know what to say to that. She’s never given it too much thought. Something twists unpleasantly inside her. At the horrible things she'd said just earlier, but more than that. She might have lost the ability to see him too. 

His eyes lift to her. “It liked you. A lot.”

She shrugs, not wanting to make much of it, feeling sore, but like before, it's hard to parse. “It’s not a complicated organism and I don’t ... I don’t have any negative associations.” She gestures to the complex.

Luke makes a sound of mild disagreement. “It seemed a little more than the norm of humanoids according to Ban Yu. He mentioned something about haptic communication. Touchsense and movement. A lot of it flew over my head, but it seemed something you took to.”

She scoffs a little. “It’s just playing with a tentacle, Luke. People do it in Core spas all the time.”

Luke snorts out a laugh.

Mara laughs a little too, more relief coming over her, even though her feelings remain a tangled mess. “Their sentience ... is a little strange,” she admits, thinking that what differs is that the Uluana turned to her to her in all its vulnerability. It might have been spite what got her into the tank, but it'd felt different in the tank, strangely freeing. The Uluana'd had no expectations of her, and she hadn't had any towards it, she and it just worked through good will and concern not to cause hurt.

She gives him a lopsided smile. “But I don’t mind...things have been...a little dull for me.”

His gaze softens slightly. “Thought you’d have gone to Coruscant after...”

He doesn't sound chastising, Mara notes and so she continues, “No, Karrde had some issues I needed to take care of. I dealt with them and soon he’ll give me something else.” 

Luke seems to hesitate, but ventures, “You don’t seem too excited.”

“I don’t know. It’s fine, I guess. Just I’ve been wanting to do something...different for a while.”

“Back to Coruscant?”

“Kriff, no.

Luke chuckles. He knows what it’s like to be at the NR headquarters. “Then what?”

“I don’t know. That’s the problem.” She rubs at her forehead. “I’ll figure it out somehow. I should get some sleep.” She gets to her feet. Luke does the same.

She stops awkwardly, because it feels like she needs to make this clear. “Hey...the holocron thing, I...I wouldn’t--I didn't--”

He shakes his head. “I know.” There’s something brittle in his eyes as he says, “You wouldn’t have said that if I hadn’t pushed you.” He stops. “I’m sorry. I was...out of line.” He closes his eyes briefly. “This whole trip...I've acted childishly.”

“I said it...that and everything else,” she says heavily. Luke has always put more stock in intentions than she does. Intentions are murky, vague things, it's actions that are clear. "Doesn’t matter why, nothing makes it okay. _I_ haven't acted...I've been...frustrated and taken it out on you. It was wrong of me. I apologize for that too." 

When her gaze returns to him, his demeanor is oddly unsettled. 

“Mara, I...” He closes his mouth, disappointment crossing his features. Mara gazes at him, confused about with the abrupt change. 

“What is it?”

There's something murky in his eyes, but whatever it is lifts, his agitation dissipating, leaving something close to resignation, an expression that reminds her of being loathe to touch the component you just fixed in case it fall apart again. “You’re very beautiful.”

“Okay,” she says, drawing out the word and squinting at him, turning her head slightly. “Thanks.” It’s the strangest context for a compliment, obviously a clumsy save for something else he changed his mind about saying, and she finds herself adding wryly, “Nothing like a nice tentacle to emphasize one’s natural attributes.”

Luke chokes out a laugh with a half-pained expression of embarrassment as he moves towards the stairs. Over his shoulder he says sheepishly, “I didn’t mean it that way.”

"Oh, don't worry." She laughs. “Everyone loves tentacles.” The dianoga pops into her head and she adds, “Friendly ones.”

He wags his finger beside him, reaches the final steps, apparently recovered. “A gentlebeing doesn’t discuss the charms of friendly tentacles.”

Mara can’t keep the smile off her face as she gets her clothes to go change. It hasn’t been like this between them for a while. This was how things had been back at Coruscant those short months before she had to go, before things changed. Luke is already in his bunk when Mara climbs into hers. 

“I’m sorry it didn’t work out.” It needs to be said too. The rest she’ll go through later. “The holocron belongs to the Jedi Order, it should have been your opportunity to ask them for it. Not your fault you had the wrong tentacle in mind.”

Luke chuckles at the last. "It's fine. It was more...the indignity of it. Nobody likes being found wanting...for whatever reason."

She pulls the sheets around her. It's true.

“You’ll have it if I get it,” she says.

“When you get it you can decide what you want to do,” he says and she hears shifting on the bunk as he gets more comfortable. "It's not..." He doesn't finish the thought.

Mara frowns. While she appreciates that it’s a concession to this peace between them, it doesn’t need to go that far. That holocron is why they’re here, after all.

“I’m serious, Luke, I don’t...what would I even do with a holocron?”

He stays quiet for a few beats, then, “Flimsiweight?”

She snorts and rolls to the side opposite his. “Go to sleep, Skywalker.”

He laughs softly. “Good night, Mara.”

\--

Her alarm sounds and she’s up. Luke is at the foot of the bunk already dressed but meditating, which she finds strange considering that his routine as far as she’s witnessed it has him meditate at night. With a mental shrug she goes to get ready for breakfast. 

Luke is waiting for her when she gets out, and the mood between them as they walk to the lounge is...strange, not bad, but she spies pressure in it. She's been thinking about what he'd said the day before, and her mind has gotten stuck at _cuttingly_. That was her intent, she knew she'd irritated him, but she'd never seriously thought any of that affected him in any substantial way. A plethora of feelings have uncoiled at the realization, many unpleasant in a starkly different way from before. 

Ban Yu appears at the lounge before she can comment on anything to get a better handle on it. He tells her that since she will talk to the Uluani, the many, that the tank used will be larger and had been filled beforehand. All is ready for after she has breakfast, and with that he leaves them to it.

“This isn’t your first waterworld is it?” she asks, grabbing a pastry as Luke wanders over to the transparisteel. Within her, there's the twist and careen of all those feelings, and remorse seems to be pitching towards the front of the line.

"Like this? Yes.”

It makes her wonder why he's even here. “Even Mon Calamari’s cities are above water," she says casually. His sister, sure, but the holocron might have not been worth all the aggravation. He could have sent someone else to get it and not deal with her.

"This is different," she says absentmindedly. Luke is not that fond of delegating, she supposes.

He nods. A hard slap on the glass jars them both. Mara stands. It’s the Uluana.

“Saying hello,” she grumbles, finishing the jam roll.

Luke slides his palm up on the glass. “Yes.”

Mara stays silent, watching. Her head decides to replay Luke saying, _but I was just like anyone else_ , and she almost winces. “Anything else?”

His eyes flicker to her and he gestured with his head in the direction of the glass. “Come see.”

She wipes her mouth with a napkin and leaves it on the table as she ambles over. It's a little dizzying to go from where she was the last time she saw Luke talk to the Uluana to now, from hurt pride to knowing that the worst version of yourself had been on display, but there's more than that. She just can't put her finger on it yet. 

“I couldn’t even sense it arrive," she distracts herself by saying. "I can’t pick it out from the other lifeforms I don’t know.”

“You can now that you know it’s here.”

She concentrates a little grateful to have something else to do. “Sure. But I'm getting nothing from it. It’s too different.”

“It’s not straightfoward,” Luke admits. He slides his hand off the glass and gestures to the tentacle affixed on the other side. “See if the proximity helps.” 

Mara places her palm on the glass. It’s a little more clear. It thinks in sensations and she feels the solidity of the surface, a soft hum that are their presences from the Uluana’s perspective. That’s all she gets.

“I’m not getting more than it being aware of us.” She feels the corner of her lip quirk. “I couldn’t talk to it in the tank either. It could figure out what I was telling it, but I was...deaf to it.” She pulls back her hand. “It did more communicating than I did.”

“Didn’t look that way from outside.”

Mara shrugs. “Mimicry is a primitive form of communication.” She's always been a great mimic.

His eyes soften on her. “Not that way. It's just from where things begin.” 

Mara looks away. “Yeah, I suppose.”

She startles when his hand clasps her wrist and he brings hers back to the glass.

“What--”

“Try it through me.”

Mara swallows. She looks at him oddly, but draws a breath and stretches out with the Force. As always, Luke is almost too bright, so much it’s hard to pick out the Uluana. If she weaves around his Force presence though, it’s there, alien, an odd...shape through the Force, but open, unguarded.

That’s not enough. Luke’d said _through_ him.

Mara’s not that comfortable with touching minds, but she’s not as uncomfortable as she once was, so she inches forward into Luke’s presence, creeping into it. She doesn’t need to ask at this point, this sort of thing with the Force is like knowing where you are when you get there. If she goes where she shouldn’t she supposes Luke will nudge her back, but he doesn’t. She’s at a shallow end too, anchored in the feel of her hand in his, her wrist, the smooth of the glass under her palm. Beyond the Uluana...the Uluana...it says --

_Hello...hello._

Not in so many words, of course, and it feels different from how a human would greet even if they were using the Force, but it is a greeting. The next is a feeling of well-being. 

She can attach words to it and does. It feels like _everything will be fine_. An strange sense wells up from the Uluana after that...as if it’s pleased with her? From last time, she supposes.

Amusement follows, an acknowledgement, as if it says, _yes, we are not like you_.

Mara has to smile. That’s clear. And she thinks to it _no but that’s all right_ , opening herself to it. The Uluana feels...comfortable in its alien-ness to her, it asks for nothing, it's content right where it is, but if she should make an overture, if she should want to interact more with it, it'd be pleased.

 _The way you are_ , Mara finds herself thinking, _is enviable._

The Uluana doesn’t understand the words, but it latches onto her wistfulness, and unfurls some warm feeling to her. Mara is human, so the analogue floats up in concepts, words, something close but not quite to: _you are_.

She feels something constrict, not a bad feeling, but she doesn’t want the Uluana to misinterpret, for a split second she flounders, wanting to break contact. 

Mara decides on the opposite. She closes her eyes.

No sooner does she let the feeling seep out than the Uluana’s Force presence wraps around her, blankets her. It unfurls a little more, inquisitive, and Mara realizes it’s parsing that Luke is there, quietly bridging for them. It’s not that it’s displeased. It isn’t, but she catches a bit of what gives it pause.

She’s talking to the Uluani. The many.

 _We are not like you_ , it repeats in something other than words. But Mara intuits a deeper meaning. They seek the singularity of a single organism, a single mind. Something they don’t have, and they are...dissatisfied with communication having another sentient bridge.

It sends out a mild wave of expectation, something like a _see you soon_ and gently draws away.

Mara slowly opens her eyes, extracting herself from Luke’s presence, slides her hand from his. The Uluana is gone.

“That was different,” she murmurs.

Luke nods. “It’s...curious.”

That seems true. Curious of what it is to exist by itself, for itself, without its many. It’s an odd thing for a human to ponder, given that humans can’t but have separate existences from each other. Most beings can’t.

“I think they probably idealize the way non-Uliani are,” Luke says ruefully. “To them we might seem completely contained.” He slowly turns his palm over, fingers spread. Mara notes it’s his left hand he’s using to illustrate. “In this. That's probably why they communicate the way they do. Chemistry. It must be novel to them, to induce a reaction in another being so different from them.”

Mara tilts her head. “But the Force...”

“Second order to them, probably. The exception not the rule to communication.” His gaze clouds slightly. “They’re not wrong about that, though we talk. I don’t think they can conceive of...” he waves a hand, “language, not the way we know it. Just signalling within certain parameters.”

“My guide," she goes back to the table for her tea, "mentioned some myth where in exchange for safety they were to live in total isolation -- except for caretakers and interlocutors."

"Sounds lonely."

Mara nods. "It's just a myth. That Uluana seemed pretty content, far as I could tell. Just curious...and it still doesn't strike me as a particularly complex organism."

He raises his eyebrows at her. "Maybe we just don't understand it." 

It feels more like a tease than a correction, but far too subtle as it goes so she replies, "Yeah, maybe it's just that far beyond us." She lets the corner of her lip tip little. "I'll let you know if I get a sense of a higher consciousness when I," she pauses for effect, "commune with them."

Luke doesn't blush, but something tells her, he's shoving his attention elsewhere. That's rewarding to that petty part of her. She's never been above a cheap prod or two. 

Mara walks over to the table and pours herself a cup of tea. She definitely feels something strange from Luke as he stands looking out the transparisteel. It's no longer embarrassment or the occlusion of it. Rather it reminds her of last night, as if there's something he wants to broach, but won't or can't. It makes her a little nervous. This new ease between them is still so fragile.

So the oddly pressured atmosphere stays until Ban Yu comes to get her.

She turns to Luke with a smile and she _knows_ the appropriate thing to say is, _I'll see you after _. It's right there at the tip of her tongue.__

But her mouth apparently has other ideas because what she ends up saying is, "You can come watch if you want." She realizes the faux pas right as the statement leaves her, tamps down a wince, and adds flatly, "I didn't mean it that way."

Luke coughs in a way that makes her think he's covering up a laugh, except there's no trace of it on his face as he says, "No, of course not. It's okay."

This should be a perfect moment to leave it be, but again, somehow she finds herself stumbling, "I mean, I don't care. I don't get put off by that. I mean it's not like I do it every day. I haven't. Not that it's unpleasant, it's not. I heard --" There's a part of her with her hand over her mouth, aghast at the verbiage, but she keeps her expression as blank as she can. "Sorry, I don't mean to make you uncomfortable or anything, I know it's different for --" She waves a hand as part of her has now taken to screaming _stop, stop, stop._

"No, I understand. It's okay," he interrupts to her relief. Thank goodness Ban Yu calls her then. She's pretty sure there'd been relief on Luke's face too. 

"Okay," she says as she should have before her mouth decided to make a mess of things. Again. "I'll see you after." 

__

\--

Ban Yu leaves her alone in the new room to change and dive in when she's ready. This one is smaller than the previous, but the tank is bigger to accommodate more of the Uluani. Temperature controls are on the warm side, so it's easy to slide into a simple meditation after she undresses to make sure she's properly serene. It's the best session she's hand during the trip, it could also be the Uluana’s welcoming sense, this morning and yesterday. Oddly enough, she finds she's looking forward to this, as a challenge, oddly enough one that has no competition, no opponent.

Mara drops into the tank, the cool water briefly shocking. It’s a deeper tank, so she feels the drop and the slightly higher pressure as she dives further to wait for the Uluana and its many. 

And there it is -- the Uluana approaches her slowly. She stays in place as it reaches forward to her hand. The Uluana stretches towards her, its tip running down her palm. Mara reaches to it with the Force and feels a flicker of recognition. The emissary. She smiles and pulls her hand back gently, lifting her head, thinks at it _come closer_.

The Uluana curls and uncurls towards her, seeking for her hand. Mara stays motionless, letting herself float as it gently curls around her wrist. Very slowly it begins to wriggle up her arm. It feels...not ticklish per se, a pleasant constriction when it wraps snug and the play of tighten and release as it moves feels like a massage along her forearm, her upper arm.

It reaches her shoulder and stops. A delicate touch along her neck, barely there, and Mara squirms, bubbles rippling out from her sudden movement. That _is_ ticklish. She worries the Uluana might misread it as discomfort but it doesn’t. It continues slithering up, reaching towards her cheek where the aqua breather is and stops, holding the aqua breather gently against her cheek.

Mara interprets the movement then. This Uluana, the emissary, is holding the aqua breather in place so as to prevent the miss from last time. Mara sends a fond feeling towards it. Just so it's unmistakable, she raises her opposite hand to trail a finger over the Uluana's top. 

_Thank you_ , she thinks at it.

The Uluana makes a twitchy movement, and she’s so caught up in her surprise that she doesn't realize the soft tapping at her ankle. Somehow while the emissary arranged itself, more Uluana have come into the tank. So many in fact that she can no longer see the bottom of it; there’s just a glowing mass of tentacles, swaying to and fro like pearly seaweed, with occasional glints of pink catching the overhead lights.

One of the Uluana is currently tapping at the arch of her foot. It clearly senses when it has Mara’s attention because it rubs itself along the top of her foot, texture warmer and more solid in the water around her. Mara smiles, looks just in time to see another Uluana haltingly approach her other foot. She points her toes, extending her foot forward and the Uluana loses its timidity, boldly wrapping around it. Its actions spur the second, and they’re both wriggling languidly up her ankles. 

A graze of another Uluana along the back of her palm calls her attention there. The tip of it trails to her open palm and down the middle of her wrist. That along with the feeling of the two Uluana reaching the back of her knee makes her move restlessly in the water. The two Uluana stop, letting her acclimate, Mara supposes. She takes the time to fall into a simple breathing cycle just to keep herself as even keeled over the strangeness of it.

 _Just pacing myself_ , she thinks to it.

The Uluana near her hand wraps around the web of her hand, and slithers up like the emissary had, its pattern of squeeze-release speeds up until it's snug around her wrist, then around her forearm, stopping at her elbow. As it does, she feels a sliding touch at her hip like a fingertip running from just under her waist, ever so slowly trailing across her lower back. Mara shivers, winds her body to the touch, the movement sluggish, meeting resistance in the water, and she raises her arms to let the Uluana gingerly curl around her hips, again constrictive but not unpleasantly so. The two Uluana by her calf loosen then tighten in a languid pattern, adding more pressure incrementally. Mara breathes more deeply. Another Uluana wraps around her from her other hip, slides up just over the first and coils up her waist, under her breasts. 

None of it is unexpected after the first often-tentative touch, but undoubtedly strange. If there is struggle at all, it is against that oddness. She wants to remain calm and inviting to that weird touch in such a different environment, under the heaviness and pressure of the water around her, the ringing silence, only broken up by her breaths through the aqua breather.

The Uluani curl and uncurl over her skin slowly enough to communicate their movements, until they perceive her loosening her muscles, adjusting. On her naked skin, it’s different from before. More immediate. She’s a bit cold where the Uluani are not on her and clings to that feeling, lets it ripple out like an invitation. Would they understand?

Another Uluana coils itself on her upper arm, the top of it reaching up to her neck. It signals as she breathes in and her body twists instinctively, skin coming alive. It must be electric, a charge low enough to thrum over her skin, more a vibration than a prickle. The Uluani at her legs signal the thrum at the back of her knees mingling with the one at her neck. Mara breathes deeply, even as she twists, sensation shooting through her, within her, mild, but enlivening. Instinctively, she reaches for more. 

The two Uluana at her hips and her waist stabilize her, the tip of the Uluana around her waist slides up, grazing across her right breast, towards her neck and signals as it does so. She jerks and shivers, the Uluani stop signalling, and stop moving. The pause feels inquiring. 

She could stop here, she thinks. There's no disappointing anyone. The Uluana aren't doing this wholly for her or for themselves, it comes to her. They're doing this _with_ her in as much as they can.

But, puzzlement seeps out of her, she's not _doing_ anything...

The tip of another Uluana traces up her the right side of her back. She startles and forcibly eases up after. The motion makes her reconsider, and she goes back to her earlier thinking as it slides across her front over her left breast, wrapping over the one already at her waist. It signals, a buzz over her skin that makes her shudder, her breathing in sudden disarray. 

They haven’t stopped signalling, the rhythm of her breathing is off. Her mind flits to the possibility of a freediving blackout -- the hazard of not pacing herself -- but she willfully pushes the thought away as soon as it manifests. The Uluani’ll take her back up if they feel anything amiss. They will. The slight pressure by her cheek, the emissary’s doing as it watches over her breathing clip seems confirmation. The signalling eases up and Mara catches her breath.

 _Good_ , she thinks from between short breaths. _Good_.

There’s pressure at her wrists and moving outwards on her skin. It's different. Gentler. Not signaling, just small suction, the suckers -- and that’s short of ticklish, less intense than the signalling, soothing after the intensity of what came before. She tries not to think about it as kissing along the underside of her wrist all the way up to the hollow in the inside of her arm at the bend of her elbow, by her ankle and up to the back of her knees. The Uluana by her neck strokes gently there. Not a hand, she tells herself. Tentacle. 

The thought blots out once they start signalling again, at the back of her knees, the inside of her arms, her neck, tentacles curling and uncurling around her breasts. She twists again, a wash of bubbles all around her, the water's resistance infuriating and _good_ , giving her something to fight against through the intensity of sensation.

She has no respite to process, and too much feeling all along her skin. A distinct touch glides along her inner thigh. Same tentacle or not she doesn’t know, but then _it_ signals. 

Her mouth slackens, as all her body goes rigid for a split second, eyes squeezing shut, a seismic shudder running through all of her and she almost drops the aqua breather if not for how it’s held in place.

Brightness bursts behind her close eyelids, it’s getting difficult to keep her breathing steady as her nerves respond to all the stimulation. It’s pleasure,...oddly distant, and simple, completely physical, but it’s pleasure nonetheless, swirling on the surface of her like a gathering tide. The tentacles glide solid and warm, squeezing and releasing ceaselessly on her skin, sometimes signalling, sometimes trailing suction along her back, her nape, her waist, the backs of her knees, her wrists, her thigh.

Her mind betrays her imagining the play of lips and fingers, nothing more -- there is no _space_ in her head for anything more -- as she twists and arches, breathing erratic and strained, her pulse unbelievably loud, but even that adds to the mounting crest of sensation.

The tentacle curled high on her leg stops signalling and drifts up to the apex of her thighs. It’s both startling and welcome for a split second before the sheer weirdness draws her back to herself, and unease sneaks in. Even as physically stimulated as she is, this is different, something to devote concentration to get used to. Even as slippery as the tentacles are, it's not enough, water is not a good lubricant, there will be some discomfort. Mara drags in a long shuddering breath, and yet if this--

But the tentacle just wriggles up, it’s top wrapping over her opposite hip, and stroking by her thigh in an easy pattern over and over, as if her flash of discomfort had dissuaded it from anything else. Another drops from the middle of her back in mirror image, wrapping itself around her other thigh. Her hips twitch against the resistance of the tentacle -- tentacles -- between her legs, and while that might be unfamiliar, the charged sensation isn’t. With an _oh_ , she’s reminded, _signalling_.

The tentacles tighten around her thigh and she clenches her legs around...it? Them? Thinking and breathing become even more difficult as she arches. She can already feel some dimming at the edge of her consciousness, but she bows her back and tilts her hips against the tentacle’s solidity, pleasure lancing out. No, she's too wound up to let the feeling peeter out without reaching its peak. All of the tentacles wrapped around her signal, an impossible sensation, one that approaches pain but stops short, Mara writhing against it -- them -- and yet, the pressure doesn’t break, water making her movements too sluggish, friction not as sure, but it has to break, it has to --

Mara spits out the aqua breather.

In an instant she’s overcome with sensation, at a border, and without the aqua breather, it cycles and cycles. She might be seeing the Uluani's luminescence through her closed eyelids, or experiencing symptoms of hypoxia.

What she does know is just as everything seems to be getting far the aqua breather is back in her mouth. A greedy inhale and she shakes, thrashes on the exhale as the sensations overwhelm. A slight whimper loosens amid her stuttering breaths, loud in her ears, and she’s left lightheaded, suspended, her heartbeat thundering in her ears. 

Mara opens her eyes, floating limp, just as the Uluana start to uncurl from her, her skin cold in the water as they withdraw -- all save the two now half wrapped along her forearms, and the emissary by her cheek still holding the aqua breather. 

It dawns on her why soon enough, her body feels weighed down with lethargy. The two Uluana at her arms are _pulling_ her back up to the surface, the lengths of it not on her, curling and uncurling quickly.

 _I can hold it now_ , she thinks to them.

The emissary lets go of the aqua breather and pats her cheek. 

_I need something that you have_. 

The emissary pats her cheek again. It feels very much like it knows.

The two Uluana swim away from her arms before she gets to the surface, but they’ve pulled her up with such force that she shoots up, withdrawing the aqua breather just before she breaks surface a few seconds later, tossing her head back for an unobstructed gulp of non-recycled air. She sinks again on the exhale, and kicks with her rubbery legs to keep afloat, ignoring the weakness in her limbs and the desire to pull herself out of the tank, wrap herself with the towel and let herself curl up for a nap right there. She wants to laugh at herself for it.

She expects to be alone, but as she scans around the tank she sees Luke there simply sitting at the edge beside where she left the towel as if he’s been waiting. The emissary pats her arm under the water and pulls away, but it swims around her waist twice, a gesture she can’t quite interpret. Mara paddles to the edge, intending to get out, but the Uluana wraps around her knee and squeezes once, then it swims around her waist again.

Mara looks up to meet Luke’s eyes, wondering why he's there. She may have made the mistake of offering, she tamps down on another wince, but he seemed uncomfortable enough not to take her up on it. Why is he waiting here then? “I guess, wait?”

"I guess." She doesn't think he can see anything, but he looks as uncomfortable as before. Maybe at the knowledge that she's naked under the water? Luke’s modesty lines have never made much sense to her.

“I didn’t expect you here,” Mara blurts out, holding herself by the ledge. She smirks a little. "Protecting my privacy and all." 

To her surprise, some of his unease seeps away. A smile tugs at the side of his lips as he looks down at her. “Turns out the privacy stuff doesn’t matter much. In the room, in the lounge, here. It’s all the same,” he volunteers. “All that signalling is kind of...loud.”

Mara laughs. It’s all much weirder than she'd imagined, but this is not where her modesty line is. She can stay like this. Her eye goes back to him, where he sits, a bit stiffly to her eyes, clad in his navy blue tabard and tunic set, just a notch below the full seriousness of the robes. _They_ can stay like this. They can go back to the way they were before she came to the academy and everything fell apart. She'd counted him as a friend before, however distantly. 

But is that all there is? 

Before she knows it she’s pushing up with the hand on the ledge, darting forward, making water splash out as she reaches up to grab hold of his sleeve and pull with her free hand. It’d be easy for Luke to counterweight, even off balance as he is, but he topples in with a splash, stupid Jedi uniform and everything. The leftover endorphin high draws out another laugh from her out of nowhere. 

But that isn't why she loops her arm around his neck, and kisses him full on the lips as she holds on to the ledge with her other hand. His surprise shockwaves out, but his arms encircle her not even a second later, and he’s kissing her back fiercely, one hand skidding up her naked back. There's nothing modest about that kiss; it has all the daring of something longed for, an edge of desperate relief in it like finding something thought lost.

Water swishes between them as she leans back slightly. He wouldn't let her sink, so she pulls her hand from the ledge and brings it to cup his face, staring into his eyes. She tries to think of something to say. Before she can, he lowers his lips to hers for another kiss, whisper soft, sweet despite the sea salt.

No, she hadn't come to the academy to be a Jedi at all.

He'd said _but I was just like everyone else_ , and she can finally see it, the way both of their expectations had been in the way. She'd swiftly turned him into an opponent once she felt lacking. He'd just as swiftly shut her out.

"Should have kicked me out and asked me to dinner," Mara whispers as they float up on the water.

Luke half sighs, breath warm at her temple. His voice is soft, but a wry note threads through it. "That would have gone over well." His fingers skim across her shoulder blade and he's not wrong, but she ignores it in favor of focusing on his fingers on her skin. He's solemn when he continues, "And I would have never given up on you. You said you wanted to learn about Jedi. I...I took you at your word. I couldn't do otherwise, I thought." She feels warmth bloom within her at the doubt that sneaks in. "If my head had been in a better place..." he concedes.

But that accounting's not what she wants, and her stomach knots, even here in his embrace. All she'd said to him...

She's done with half measures. 

"You want to?" Mara whispers. "Take me out to dinner?"

She nearly makes a face at how stupid she sounds. More water swishes between them as Luke adjusts his hold, his arms around her waist. He’s using the Force to keep them afloat, Mara realizes. Her self consciousness eases up a bit and she smiles. It feels shaky -- and unnatural because of it. She struggles to keep the smile.

Luke leans back slightly to look at her, pads of his fingers trailing down her cheek gingerly as if he's scared she'll shove him away and make for the edge of the tank. She can't. Something in her scrambles to answer the yearning expression on his face instead. He has to know. Why would he have told her why he'd failed the Uluani's test otherwise?

“Yes,” he whispers back.

Mara brings her other arm around his neck. His eyes flick to it, catching the decisiveness in the movement, slide down her face, lingering on her lips.

Is that what she’s wanted all along? To muss him up a little, knock him off the distant pedestal he’s been shoved on. Pull him back into her reach. Had it been that when Yavin came into her viewport for the first time? Draw him close by being better than anyone else, the best.

Mara drops her forehead onto his shoulder, her heart squeezing in her chest like there’s a fist around it. 

She'd gone about everything the wrong way.

His hand cups the back of her neck, but he's silent a bit too long. When she lifts her head to look at him, trepidation clouds his expression. Resolve flickers across it before he blurts out, “My sister didn’t hire you. I did.” His throat works as he swallows. "I asked her to."

Mara stares at him. His hold loosens, water lapping at them as it does, a flurry of emotions cross his face. 

“I wanted to...make things better...and then...” His voice goes hoarse, and it’s again that outline of Luke as she’d known him, as she'd _begun_ to, earnest and open, and _uncertain_. Mara can almost see the play of Coruscant lights on his face as his words tumble out gracelessly, “I just I didn’t know _how_ \-- after you left the way you did, I didn't even expect it you to agree, when you did I thought maybe... but you were still so angry, and I -- ”

“I'm sorry,” she whispers, her own incredulity gritty in her mouth. Her chest constricts more at the memory of leaving Yavin after telling him, it had all been a waste of her time, her arrival this time making clear it was only about the job, all the while wanting to exact retribution for being dismissed. _Cuttingly_ , she thinks. That was easy, but it wasn't what she wanted at all.

"I knew I was shooting myself in the foot when I pushed you, but at least you weren't ignoring me. I should have been better than that, but I...," he says huskily. "It was wrong and I...I was already thinking of how I could fix it. I wasn't going to leave things as they were. I couldn't."

Mara shuts her eyes, nestling her head under his chin. It's not a triumph; but if it's shame it's lessened by the knowledge that he'd not been that distant from her after all, even in all the confusion.

She presses her forehead into his chest, feeling soaked as much in regret as relief. "I said those things. I did. I'm sorry." 

His hand lifts to her hair, settles and slides down to her back, that, and the rise and fall of his breathing lull the last of the pressure away.

A tentative tap on her side from under the water makes her look back. 

She pulls away ever so slightly once she sees its the the Uluana, just below the water’s surface...and past it maybe two meters away, where its opposite end would be, a cube bobs on the water. The holocron.

Mara slides one arm from Luke’s neck and half turns reaching towards the Uluana, runs her index finger along its back under the water. It shivers, coils a little in a twitchy motion that reads to her as pleased. 

It trails its tip along the underside of her forearm, and then it’s curling and uncurling, swimming away, bubbles trailing behind it. 


	4. Chapter 4

EPILOGUE

  


Mara goes out the door to the observatory area of the ziggurat. The lights out front make it so she can see the _Luck_ on the landing pad in front of the temple. Since she’d only spent one extra day at the academy before clearing off, she’d opted to leave it outside. The quarter is soon to begin and the hangar will be filled with transports and supply ships.

She slides down the wall to sit, looking up at the starry sky overhead. She’d always liked the observatory, but she'd rarely let herself waste time like this. 

Experimentally, she stretches out. Dinner is coming to a close downstairs, a group of apprentices moving to the lounge, others to kitchen duty, while others retire to their rooms. By habit and comfort she’s come to take her meals by herself when she’s come to Yavin. Luke has joined her for all of them for the two days she'd been onplanet, given that she’s soon to be off.

Mara feels him coming up the stairs. He stops and there’s that gentle probe, as if he doesn’t want to intrude, but of course she wants him here so she sends that feeling along. He's pleased as he comes over, and soon she hears the creak of the observatory door.

“Storm season’s just ending,” Luke says, walking over to her and sitting beside her on the stone floor. “It’ll get a little cooler in a bit.”

“I don't think I was here long enough for a season to go by," she murmurs.

He doesn't say anything, just reaches for her hand.

Mara’s due to rendezvous with Karrde in a few days over at Sullust. That cheers her up somewhat; she floated starting her own subsidiary trade firm to Karrde and he seemed receptive. They’ll discuss the details in this meeting. She’s more excited about it than she's been over anything work-related in a while. She can't believe it hadn't occurred to her before. Karrde had mentioned it as a distant possibility a while back. Maybe this'll be the end of that restless feeling nipping at her heels.

“I’ll be back once I work out everything.”

Luke nods. “You’ll have your own company by then.”

She snorts. “It takes longer than that, Luke. Six months. Maybe a year. And I don't know, if Karrde will want me for this other thing first. You’ll see me well before then is what I mean.”

“I know," he says lightly. "I just don’t know if we’ll see each other _here_. Yavin isn't necessarily close. There may be midpoints to steal away to.”

Mara breaks into a grin and looks back up to the skies overhead. 

“Some more holocrons to acquire?" she teases. "Research trips for the head of the Jedi Order?” 

Luke’s thumb strokes over the palm of her hand. “Rare material to study.”

“Ah." Mara scoots just a bit closer, enough to drop her head on his shoulder and tries not to chuckle at the reminder of Tionne badgering Luke about a report for the archives on how his audience with the Uluani went. Mara cares as much about how Luke will maneuver through all of it as he cares for the holocron itself -- that had never been the reason for the trip, another shocking admission in a long list. She'd been happy to tell him that she wouldn't need any recognition for it, nor would she hold it against Luke if he omitted her role in acquiring it. Knowing him though, he'll probably write her in, albeit in some oblique borderline euphemistic way. That's fine. She has more pressing matters to consider. 

Since leaving Acquis, there'd been long uninterrupted stretches of conversation between she and Luke, some of them good, an unsurprising amount, difficult. There were still things to fine-tune, she might still have a heavy hand, and Luke himself still hadn’t lost the habit of talking _at_ her when he was irritated, but they’d laid out a no-heavy silences policy for the moment, and while unglamorous, it’d been effective and holding. To Mara it feels like being in transit. Under reconstruction? Something like that. It's better than both the casual friendship at Coruscant and the tense _thing_ that had sprung between them during her short stay here.

Luke murmurs, “I missed you terribly.” He looks down and laughs softly. "Even though you drove me crazy, I never wanted you to go."

She smiles, and it's a wavery thing, for all she loves hearing this, still weighed with regret. Luke does her the favor of kissing it away, and she likes that too. Any difficulties that have stood between them don't seem insurmountable in moments like this. 

“I’ll see about a midpoint,” Mara whispers once he draws away.

“Sometimes," he says with a ring of confession a few beats later, "I almost think....things will go back to how they were.” He flashes her a rueful smile.

She gives his hand a squeeze. This is how it’s been between them for him, she’d learned. She’d left him staring off at her departing figure, caught in his own well of regrets. It still feels weird to know that when she’d been so certain he hadn’t cared to look up. 

“They won’t.” She exhales. After a week and a days of so much _talk_ between them, there might be days when they don’t at all, not out of either of them wanting it...and she finds she can understand some of Luke's worry. Absences have never cleared much between them. Both times they'd made things worse.

But absences don't have to be silences.

“What is it?”

“That week to Acquis,” she mutters. “Feels like a waste.”

Luke slides his hand from hers and brings it up to her upper back, stroking lightly. "It was. Those documents were incredibly boring. Didn't end up being all that useful either.”

The admission makes her laugh, pushing away her melancholy. There’s only one thing left. One thing that they haven’t broached yet, not in so many words. She doesn’t know why she’s tense; its a tacit understanding, and she senses that she doesn’t bring it up he will. 

She looks down and smiles a little. So she has to, out of that inexplicable urge she always has to beat him to the punch. But maybe it's just he's better with uncertainty than she is, or more patient. They're just different in some ways, even if they are too alike in others. 

Luke's hand strokes up, his fingers skimming along the crook of her neck.

“I don’t want to do the whole dating thing.”

Luke’s fingers still, his hand just resting on her upper back. “Mm?”

Mara lifts her head. “If you’re going to be here and I’m going to be out there. I don’t want to waste more time with some on-off shavit.”

She rubs her face again in exasperation at putting it all to words. A week is not enough to ask that they not see other people. It’s ludicrous. They haven’t even spent the night. She's been wanting to let herself breathe a little, slow down and feel things as they are for once. But the thought of having dealt with all _this_ for Luke to somehow meet someone else, however distant the possibility, half makes her want to stand up and make a beeline for the _Luck_. A stupid impulse; even now it's too late to avoid the kind of hurt that might result. They're no longer in the shallows.

Luke’s hand drops to her shoulder and he pulls her close, and very casually asks, “You want to get married?”

Mara sputters and laughs, then swats at his shoulder as he throws her a grin. 

“No, you mynock,” she says between laughs and blurts out, “I’m being serious. I don’t know a thing about this stuff, but I want to skip past all the will-he-comm-me-back bantha shit.”

“Straight into--”

“The part where we just drive each other crazy.” Mara leans against him. She lowers her voice a little. “ _Only_ each other.”

His smile might be the brightest thing she’s seen. 

Luke doesn’t come back with some smart retort; he pulls her even closer, wrapping his arms around her. It feels a little like floating, and she thinks, she’s not in love with Luke, but it's a close thing, not about doing anything but letting herself be pulled along.

That's perfectly fine.

Mara closes her eyes, sliding her own arms across his back.

  


.end

[credits](https://youtu.be/l-cvtM_ufdE)


End file.
